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Professor Geoff Nicholls
Associate Professor of Statistics

New collaborations welcome!

Biographical Sketch

Professor Geoff Nicholls, B.Sc. (Physics, Canterbury, New Zealand), MA, PhD (DAMTP, Cambridge, UK), researches Bayesian statistical methodology and lectures in statistics in the Department. He teaches probability, statistics and applied mathematics in St Peter's college. Geoff joined the Statistics Department in 2005 from the Mathematics Department of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He was Head of Department 2012-2015.  

Research Interests

  • Applied Bayesian inference
  • Bayesian statistical methods
  • Computational statistics
  • Monte Carlo and Variational methods

Geoff is working on Bayesian statistical inference for problems with computationally demanding prior and likelihood evaluations. Research is driven by problems presented by scientists and scholars working in a range of application areas, including Geoscience, Linguistics, History and Sociology, Genetics and Archaeology. Solving these problems motivates new statistical models, well adapted computational tools and novel statistical methodology.

 

Publications

Kelly, L. and Nicholls, G. (2016) “Lateral transfer in Stochastic Dollo models”, arXiv.
Matechou, E. et al. (2015) “Bayesian analysis of Jolly-Seber type models; incorporating heterogeneity in arrival and departure”, arXiv.
Moores, M. et al. (2015) “Scalable Bayesian Inference for the Inverse Temperature of a Hidden Potts Model”, arXiv.
Schumacher, L. and Nicholls, G. (2013) “A Cell-Level Mechanism of Contrast Gain Control”, arXiv.
Nicholls, G., Fox, C. and Watt, A. (2012) “Coupled MCMC with a randomized acceptance probability”, arXiv.
Ryder, R. and Nicholls, G. (2011) “Missing Data in a Stochastic Dollo Model for Binary Trait Data, and its Application to the Dating of Proto-Indo-European”, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C (Applied Statistics), 60(1), pp. 71–92.
Chance, S. et al. (2011) “Classifying patients and controls using multi-dimensional scaling and exploring the metric of semantic space”, in Expanding the Space of Cognitive Science - Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2011, pp. 1817–1822.
Nicholls, G. and Nunn, P. (2010) On building and fitting a spatio-temporal change-point model for settlement and growth at Bourewa, Fiji Islands.
Nicholls, G. and Nunn, P. (2010) “On building and fitting a spatio-temporal change-point model for settlement and growth at Bourewa, Fiji Islands”, arXiv.
Ryder, R. and Nicholls, G. (2009) “Missing data in a stochastic Dollo model for cognate data, and its application to the dating of Proto-Indo-European”, arXiv.

Contact Details

College affiliation: Fellow and Tutor at St Peter's College

Office: 1.12 

Research Students

Current DPhil students: 

Sitong Liu Generalised Bayesian inference
Laura Battaglia Bayes methods for misspecified models
Holly Li Scalable Statistical inference for partial orders
Shiyi Sun New variational methods for Bayesian inference

Recent Graduates - DPhil:

Jessie Jiang (2024) Statistical inference for partial orders
Schyan Zafar (2024) Bayesian inference for multivariate time series 
Chris Carmona (2023) Bayesian Semi-Modular Inference
Lorenzo Pacchiardi (2022) Statistical inference in generative models (with R Dutta)
Hanwen Xing (2022) Diagnostic Methods for Bayesian Inference