The following is a list of all the permanent academic staff in the cluster. See here for Postdocs/RAs and PhD students
Dr Alex Best
Ecology & evolution of infectious disease
My research focuses on the dynamics of infectious disease. I model interactions between hosts and their parasites at a range of biological scales, from how bacteria overcome the human immune response, to the impacts of temporal and spatial structure to the population dynamics of disease, to exploring the feedbacks that shape the co-evolution of host defence and parasite infectivity.
Prof Paul Blackwell
Bayesian statistics, modelling and inference in ecology, applications in archaeology
I mainly work in statistical ecology, particularly on continuous-time movement ecology and resource selection but also on capture-recapture modelling and on mapping territories and home ranges. In archaeological statistics, I led the statistical modelling, inference and implementation for the first Bayesian radiocarbon calibration curves, and was involved in developing the methods for the current international standard calibration curves (published in 2020); I also work on shape analysis in bioarchaeology.
Prof Caitlin Buck
Statistics in archaeology
Caitlin's research interests lie in the applications of Bayesian statistics to archaeology and palaeoenvironmental science. She is best known for her seminal work in Bayesian radiocarbon dating which is widely held to have revolutionised archaeological chronology construction.
Prof Alex Fletcher
Mathematical biology, morphogenesis, tissue dynamics
My research is focused primarily on understanding the form and function of developing tissues using mathematical and quantitative approaches. Elucidating the mechanisms underlying these processes help improve our understanding of embryogenesis, tissue renewal and wound healing, and potentially impact on tissue engineering and cancer treatment strategies.
Dr Nic Freeman
Probability
A common theme throughout much of my work is genealogies. Genealogies record relationships, and transfers, of information across time and space - such as a family tree, or the spread of a news story. I have worked on several situations in which modelling, or analysing, the large-scale structure of a genealogy is a key issue.
Dr Jill Johnson
Statistics
My research interests are in the development and practical application of statistical methods to quantify, assess and then reduce uncertainty in large-scale complex models of real-world systems. To date, I have focussed on problems in environmental science and particularly in relation to the atmosphere and climate: I have worked with a range of models on different scales including the simulation of an individual cloud, to the simulation of a cloud field, to the simulation of the global distribution of aerosols in the atmosphere.
Dr Jonathan Jordan
Probability
My current main research interest is in random graphs. One family of models I have been particularly interested in is the so-called preferential attachment models based on the original model of Barabási and Albert. I have also been interested in variants of preferential attachment which involve a choice mechanism, which may also involve intrinsic properties of the vertices, such as fitness, and in models where the vertices have intrinsic types.
Prof Nick Monk
Mathematical biology; regulatory networks; pattern formation
His primary research interests are in the application of mathematics to problems in biology and medicine. Particular areas of activity include animal and plant developmental biology, pattern formation, and models of cellular signalling. He has recently developed an interest in the potential for machine learning to guide model discovery and selection in biology.
Dr Bryony Moody
Statistics
My research interests involve finding sustainable strategies for handling large and complex chronometric and stratigraphic data. In addition, I am also interested in how graph theory and Bayesian statistics have practical applications in archaeology, particularly with respect to radiocarbon dating and handling stratigraphic data
Prof Jonathan Potts
Mathematical biology, movement ecology, spatial ecology, partial differential equations
My work focuses predominantly on spatially-explicit modelling of ecological phenomena. Most of my research is driven by a few fundamental questions: Can we construct techniques to help predict the effects of future environmental change on the ability of animal populations to survive? How can we infer the nature of animal interaction mechanisms, both with each other and their environment, from movement data? How do complex systems of animal movements and interactions give rise to emergent population-level patterns?
Prof Shaun Quegan
Environmental dynamics
I work on the physics, measurements, models, statistics, system analysis and sensor properties that all form part of measuring aspects of the land-atmosphere carbon cycle, with a particular emphasis on exploiting satellite measurements to improve carbon cycle models. A lot of my work is to do with forests, including measuring their biomass (I'm the lead scientist on the European Space Agency BIOMASS mission) and detecting and quantifying tropical deforestation.
Dr Sammy Rashid
Statistics
I am a University Teaching Associate and have publications in educational research, on reading and maths standards; the intersection between HE & FE; and on children, technology and play. My Ph.D. was written on the topic of Inference for spatio-temporal data with particular reference to atmospheric pollution.
Dr Dimitrios Roxanas
Probability and Statistics
My current research interests are in inverse problems, statistical signal estimation, and control theory. Application areas that I am interested in are finance (statistical arbitrage, portfolio optimisation), and imaging. Other interests include Analysis (Harmonic Analysis, Geometric Measure Theory, and Partial Differential Equations -my original area of expertise), and Probability (especially, Random Matrix Theory).
Dr Robin Stephenson
Probability
My main areas of interest are random trees of the discrete and continuous kind, random graphs, and their local and scaling limits. This has led me to work on a variety of topics including fragmentation-type processes and their family trees, Galton-Watson trees and their limits, Markov Additive Processes, random directed graphs, and random maps.
Dr Eleanor Stillman
Applied statistics
My main research interests lie in the practical application of statistics to geology and materials science. A long term concern has been the modelling of particle size, with investigations into its relationship with sediment transport processes and strength of composite materials. Other interests include classification methods in pollen analysis, optimal design of glasses and glazes, statistical education and promotion of knowledge exchange activities.
Dr Wei Xing
Statistics and artificial intelligence
My general research interests are in the broad field of artificial intelligence (AI) and statistics. Currently, I am into the intersection of AI and computational engineering, targeting at the development of novel AI methods for modern engineering problems, particularly in the integrated circuit (IC) design and smart manufacturing.
Dr Mark Yarrow
Applied Probability Trust, Biometrika
Since 2019, I have been the Executive Editor of the Applied Probability Trust, based in the School. In addition, I have taken up the post of Executive Manager of the Biometrika Trust since 2022. My Ph.D. was written on the topic of preferential attachment graphs with location.