Staff Profile

Education/experience:

• I obtained an MSc (2011) and PhD (2015) in Statistics from The University of Warwick;
• subsequently, I worked as a research associate at Cambridge, UCL, and NUS (Singapore);
• before joining Newcastle, I was Lecturer in Statistics at Loughborough University.

Current administrative roles:

• Computational Statistics research group lead
• PGR Selector for the Statistics Section;

Research interests:

I develop and analyse methodology for Computational (Bayesian) Statistics, especially in high dimensions, e.g.:

• conditional sequential Monte Carlo (CSMC) methods in high dimensions [journal, arXiv],
• CSMC-type generalisations of MALA, MGRAD and PCN(L) which scale more favourably than standard versions of these algorithms with the time horizon in state-space models [arXiv],
• particle MCMC methods [journal, arXiv].

I am also interested in applications of such methods in biology. For instance, I have been working on:

• ecology [journal, arXiv],
• epigenetics (DNA methylation) [arXiv]; our implementation is available as a Nextflow pipeline on GitHub.

Other research interests:

1. machine learning, in particular on machine unlearning;
2. mathematical and statistical modelling of endurance sports, e.g., running or cycling; some preliminary works are available here [journal, biorXiv] (see also the letter) and here [journal].

More generally, I am always keen to collaborate across disciplines on projects that could benefit from statistical/mathematical modelling, data science, or machine learning. Also feel free to contact me if you are interested in PhD projects in any of the above-mentioned areas.

PhD students:

• Jingrui Hou (machine unlearning; supervised jointly with Prof. Georgina Cosma; graduated 2024);
• Jonah Drake (statistical modelling of endurance sports; supervised jointly with Dr Richard Ferguson);
• Petros Andreou (machine unlearning; supervised jointly with Prof. Georgina Cosma);
• Jamie Lanyon (machine unlearning; supervised jointly with Prof. Georgina Cosma).