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Staff Profile

Professor Kevin Wilson

Professor of Applied Statistics

  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 7311
  • Address: School of Mathematics, Statistics & Physics
    Herschel Building
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

I am a Professor of Applied Statistics. I gained a PhD in Bayesian Statistics from Newcastle University in 2011 and an MMathStat from Newcastle University in 2007. I worked for the University of Strathclyde from May 2011 as a Research Associate in Risk and Reliability and as a Lecturer until August 2015.


My research interests are in the area of Bayesian analysis with focuses on the elicitation of prior information for subjective inference, vine copulas, uncertainty quantification and the design of experiments. My main application areas are in engineering and biostatistics, particularly diagnostics and cluster randomised trials.


I have published in leading journals in statistics including Bayesian Analysis, the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), Statistics in Medicine and Technometrics and operational research including Risk Analysis and the European Journal of Operational Research. I have conducted consultancy and knowledge exchange projects with organisations including Costello Medical, NICE, Rocket Medical, Northern Gas Networks, Mologic and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.


I am a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and a member of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. I am principal investigator on the Leverhulme grant: Loss-based Bayesian additive regression trees and the EPSRC grant SaFEGen: A statistical framework for efficient evidence generation in diagnostic development.


I enjoy running and compete in road and cross country races for Wallsend Harriers. I don't like egg whites.


Google Scholar: Click here.

Research

Research Interests


  • Expert knowledge elicitation
  • Bayesian design of experiments
  • Diagnostic test design and analysis
  • Assurance for sample size calculations
  • Vine copulas
  • Risk and reliability analysis
  • Bayes linear methods


Full text versions of many of my publications can be found on Newcastle University ePrints and Arxiv.


I would be interested in supervising PhD students in any of the areas above, particularly in expert knowledge elicitation and Bayesian methods for sample size calculation. I would particularly welcome applications from students bringing the own funding.


Current Research Funding



Previous Research Funding



Videos of Research Talks


Elicitation of structured expert judgements from groups – protocols, experiences and interpreting the results, Risk and Uncertainty Conference (11th June 2024)

Probability elicitation for a future flooding scenario in the CReDo digital twin, Structured Expert Judgement Online Seminar Series (24th May 2022)

Prior specification via mathematical aggregation with heterogeneous groups of experts, ISBA World Meeting 2021 (28th June 2021)

Uncertainty elicitation and quantification from experts, Isaac Newton Institute Workshop on Expert Judgement (10th June 2020) 

An introduction to expert judgement elicitation: when, what and how, ICMS Energy Tutorial Day (14th December 2016)

Teaching

I 2024/25 I am teaching


  • Research Methods in Psychology 2a (PSY2023)
  • Research Methods in Psychology 2b (PSY2024)
  • Research Methods in Psychology 2c (PSY2025)


Current students can find all of the resources for these modules on Canvas.


I have also taught


  • Advanced Statistics for Empirical Psychology (PSY3048)
  • Introduction to Probability and R (MAS1608)
  • Bayesian Methodology (MAS8384)
  • Statistics for Empirical Psychology (PSY2010) 
  • Introduction to Statistical Inference (MAS2901)
  • Multivariate Data Analysis (MAS3325)
  • Professional Skills for Accounting and Finance (ACC1012/1053)
Publications