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Staff Profile

Dr David Walshaw

Lecturer in Statistics

  • Email: david.walshaw@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 7219
  • Address: School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics
    Herschel Building
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

I am a lecturer in Statistics in the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics (MSP) with 30 Years of Service at Newcastle University.

I am Senior Tutor, and and Chair the Support to Study Panel for Mathematics and Statistics. My primary roles involve safeguarding student wellbeing and progress in an academic context, and connecting students with wider wellbeing support when needed. 

I lecture in Statistics and Statistical Methods to students from a wide range of different backgrounds, both within MSP and across a range of other disciplines. 

I have a long history of collaborative research with colleagues in Medicine and the Social Sciences. More recently my focus has been on impact-related work, and I have active collaborations with the UK Met Office, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, and Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies.

My main research interests are Statistics Models for Extreme Weather, and Environmental Statistics. 

I am actively seeking PhD students for the 2023-2024 intake. I am offering a studentship within the Geospatial Systems Centre for Doctoral Training, while actively seeking students for funded or self-funded projects within Mathematics, Statistics and Physics. Details can be found in the Research section.

Research

My main research interests are Statistical Models for Extreme Weather, and Environmental Statistics.

 

However I have a long history of collaborative research with colleagues in Medicine and the Social Sciences. More recently I have focussed on impact related work. Current projectes include:

 

1. collaboration with the UK Met Office on a project to use modern statistical methods to redraw the UK's wind-speed return-level maps, as used in statutory codes for building design. The current maps are based on outdated statistical methods, and our work will greatly improve precision and reduce bias.

 

2. work with the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and the Particles Retrieval Advisory Group (Dounreay) providing scientific advice for the retrieval programme related to particles of irradiated nuclear fuel around Dounreay, Caithness.

 

3. consultancy with Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies (Billingham) on improving efficiency for cell culture solutions for the biopharmaceutical industry.

 

I am offering a PhD project for the Geospatial Systems CDT 2023 intake:

Spatial modelling of present and future extreme wind speeds for improved design and resilience of national infrastructure. ( the first listed project at

https://research.ncl.ac.uk/geospatial-systems/phdstudentships/phdprojects/ )

with the UK Met Office as the industrial partner and Simon Brown, Climate Extremes Science Manager at the Met Office Hadley Centre, as the co-supervisor. This project has already received applications and enquiries.


I am also actively seeking applications for the following projects, available for funded or self-funded PhD students within MSP:

·  Climate variability and climate change

·  Extreme rainfall over multiple time-scales


Teaching

Teaching for 2022 - 2023:

  • MAS1403 (Semester 1, 10 credits) Quantitative Methods for Business Management (160 students);
  • MAS3913 (Semester 2, 10 Credits) Generalized Linear Models (117 students);
  • MAS2403 (Semester 2, 10 credits) Statistical Methods for Marketing and Management (17 students);
  • MAS8391 (Semesters 1 and 2, 40 credits) MMathStat Project Supervision (1 student).
  • CSC8639 (Semesters 2 and 3, 80 credits) Project and Dissertation for Data Science).

I have taught Statistics and Statistical Methods courses to a wide range of audiences at Newcastle University. In addition to regular teaching at all four stages within Mathematics, Statistics and Physics, I have delivered a wide range of service courses to other schools. These include to students studying Business, Medicine, Dentistry, Speech and Language Sciences, Agriculture, Food and Nutrition, and Marine Sciences. 

I have always received excellent student feedback on my teaching, and a number of teaching commendations from the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics. 

 


Publications