*PhD Studentship in Computationally Intensive Statistics with
application to Zoonoses*
Due to unforeseen circumstances a 3.5 year PhD studentship in
Computationally Intensive Statistics has recently become available
again at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Lancaster
University. The studentship is part-funded by the National Centre for
Zoonosis Research and part funded by the EPSRC. It is available to UK
students and pays fees plus a stipend for the full 3.5 year period. For
a student starting in October 2008 the first year's stipend would be
£14,940.
A zoonosis is a disease which is transmissible from animals to humans,
and the project will involve the analysis of data from a 5 year study
into the presence of cowpox, anaplasma, babesia, and bartonella in
field voles in their natural habitat. Ecologists are particularly
interested in the relationships between the diseases and in the spread
of robustness characteristics of individual field voles.
The student will develop new methodologies for Bayesian inference for
stochastic processes, based on Markov chain Monte Carlo, and then use
them to answer the questions about zoonoses in which the ecologists are
interested. The project will equip the student with expertise in
computationally intensive methods which has a wide range of potential
applications, while being subject to the constructive discipline of
finding practical answers to specific questions.
The department was rated 6* in the most recent RAE. It provides a
thriving research environment, with over 25 PhD students within
statistics. It runs an extensive range of postgraduate level courses, as
well as being a founder member of the UK's Academy for PhD Training in
Statistics (APTS). The department provides generously for PhD students,
for example in terms of travel money for conferences, office space and
through providing all PhD students with a departmental laptop for use
during their PhD.
For detail of the research activities see
http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/department/research/statistics
For details of how to apply see
www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/department/opportunities/PhD/applying
For informal discussion contact the Professor John Whitehead
<[log in to unmask]> or Dr Chris Sherlock <[log in to unmask]>.
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