Activities

Organisation of Conferences

  • 2007 Stochastic Processes and Applications Program committee member.
  • 2004: EPSRC-funded Durham Conference on Mathematical Genetics (joint organizer with Professor G. McVean).
  • 1994: Chair of 12th Australian Statistical Society Conference, held at Monash University, Australia.

Supervision of Postgraduate Students

Fifteen DPhil/PhD students and three MSc by research students have completed their degrees under my supervison. In addition, I have supervised many MSc and 4th year honours research projects.

PhD Students at Monash University, Graduation year.

1979 B. de Silva. Structure and independence in multivariate stable distributions

1982 P. Narayan. Bounds for probability generating functions and their applications in branching processes

1986 P. O'Brien. General mutation models in population genetics.

1995 H. Nath. Migration and the coalescent in population genetics.

1997 M. Bahlo. Gene-conversion and the coalescent process.

1998 R. Thomson. The shape of a coalescent tree.

1999 P. Gorroochurn. Population genetics in sub-divided populations.

2000 P. Slade. On ancestral graphs in theoretical population genetics under recombination and selection.

DPhil Students at the University of Oxford, Graduation Year

2003 Simon Myers. The detection of recombination events using DNA sequence data.

2004 Graham Coop. The likelihood of gene trees under selective models.

2005 Tanne Clark. Statistical methods for finding associations in dense genetic regions.

2006 Joanna Zhuang. Risk Factors for HIV-1 Infection and Disease Progression in Uganda.

2008 Paul Jenkins. Importance sampling on the coalescent with recombination.

2009 Paul Munday. Importance sampling in spatial epidemics.

2014 Hongyu Jain. Population genetics genealogies under selection.

Publications

I have a total of 115 publications, the majority in Mathematical Genetics.

Refereeing

I regularly referee papers on Mathematical Population Genetics plus occasional papers on Stochastic Processes. The journals include:

  • Genetics,
  • Theoretical Population Biology,
  • Advances in Applied Probability,
  • Annals of Applied Probability,
  • Journal of Molecular Evolution,
  • Journal of Mathematical Biology,
  • Royal Society Journals.

I have referred grant applications for the EPSRC, Royal Society, BBSRC, NSF, NERC, and the Australian Research Council, and research theses (DPhil/PhD/MPhil/MSc) for Oxford, Macquarie, Melbourne, Monash, La Trobe and RMIT Universities.

Other Professional Activities and Administration

Examples of positions held and administration carried out include:

  • 2008 Chairman of Examiners 2nd year Mathematics and Statistics, Oxford University.
  • 2005–2006 Chair of Examiners Honours year in Mathematics and Statistics, Oxford University.
  • 1999 – 2002 Chairman of Examiners, MSc in Applied Statistics, Oxford University.
  • 2003 Finance Committee, Lady Margaret Hall.
  • 1998– 2012 Member of Governing Body, Lady Margaret Hall.
  • July–Dec 1997 Deputy Head, Mathematics Department, Monash University.
  • 1989-1991 Head of Statistics Section, Monash University.
  • 1993-94 Central Council Member, Australian Statistical Society.
  • 1989-1991 Associate Director, Australian Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET) Key-Centre of Statistical Sciences.

Teaching

At Monash University, I taught many courses in mathematical statistics, applied probability and mathematical methods from 1st year to Honours level.

At Oxford University, I have given lecture courses on:

  • statistical inference,
  • experimental design,
  • case studies in statistics,
  • statistical analysis of data,
  • mathematical genetics and
  • graph theory.

In addition, I gave tutorials to students of Lady Margaret Hall on a variety of topics in statistics, probability theory and applied mathematics (144 tutorial hours per year).