Blogs

Report - Current Topics in Designed Experiments

By Kirsty Hassall posted 6 days ago
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The British and Irish Region held a meeting at King’s College London on 23 April 2026. Marking the Centenary of RA Fisher’s landmark paper “The Arrangement of Field Experiments”, the meeting focussed on the design of experiments in modern biometrics. Fisher (1926) introduced, at least in outline form, many of the methods that are still being extended today, including randomisation and its relationship with data analysis, replication, blocking, factorial treatment structures and confounding. Three speakers described their recent work. First, Peter Goos (KU Leuven) described a flexible algorithm for sample size and design optimization in the presence of transition ...
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Report - The Role of Statisticians in Reproducibility

By Kirsty Hassall posted 6 days ago
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The Annual Young-ISA Webinar ran from 12:00 until 14:30 on April 15th 2026 and focused on “The Role of Statisticians in Reproducibility”. This was a joint event with the British and Irish Region of the International Biometric Society. There were four invited speakers: Prof. Anne-Laure Boulesteix (Ludwig Maximilian University Munich), Dr. Isabella Gollini (University College Dublin), Dr. Neil Wright (University of Oxford), and Dhorasso Junior Temfack Nguefack (Trinity College Dublin) who each delivered talks on their research and participated in a discussion. The event had 67 registrations. For full details please see: https://young-istat.github.io/events/p ...
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Event on Genomics - Meeting report

By Kirsty Hassall posted 6 days ago
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The IBS-BIR genomics event took place online on 25 February 2026 and featured presentations on methods for interpreting genetic variants associated with breast cancer risk, focusing particularly on BRCA1 and BRCA2. Kyriaki Michailidou , Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Biostatistics at The Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics gave a talk titled “Utilizing large scale case-control data for variant classification in breast cancer risk genes” discussed how genetic variation contributes to breast cancer, ranging from rare high-risk mutations to common low-risk variants, and highlighted the clinical challenge of variants of uncertain significance ...
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Obituary - Professor Richard Cormack

By Kirsty Hassall posted 03-04-2026
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It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Professor Richard Cormack who has died at the age of 90. Richard pioneered the development of mark-recapture theory for estimating survival and published a number of landmark research papers. His work has had a lasting impact in various fields including ecology, genetics and social sciences. Richard was born on 12 March 1935 and attended Glasgow Academy from the age of 7, obtaining 6 Scottish Highers at the young age of 14. Three years later, he entered directly into the second year at King’s College, Cambridge, intending at the time to be a theoretical astronomer but switching to mathematics, ...
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Report - Statistical Challenges in the Agri-Environment Sector

By Kirsty Hassall posted 12-05-2025
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This event took place on the 19 th September, 2025 at the University of Warwick and was attended by 25 people. The event was jointly organised by the BIR and NABES (a UK network of statisticians working in the Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Sciences). Attendees consisted of both academics and professional statisticians representing a range of organisations (BioSS, Defra, JNCC, BGS, Rothamsted Research). The day started with an excellent keynote presentation from Professor Caroline Brophy (Trinity College Dublin) who spoke about biodiversity modelling and diversity interaction models covering recent advances in the methodology and practical ...
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Obituary - Professor C David Kemp

By Kirsty Hassall posted 11-27-2025
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It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Professor C David Kemp. Professor C David Kemp, who was Secretary of the British Region of the IBS from1961 to 1970 and was Regional President for 1977-78, died on 26th October at the age of 98. After National Service, David was offered the opportunity of studying Physics at Birmingham University but chose instead to study Mathematics with Economics at the University of Bristol, where he met his future wife, Freda, on the same course. (H ow lucky we are that he chose Mathematics and then Statistics .) After graduating in 1952, David and Freda went on to the Oxford Diploma Course in Statistics, ...
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Winner of the YBA 2025

By Kirsty Hassall posted 10-23-2025
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It is with great pleasure to announce that the winner of the 2025 Young Biometrician Award is Dr Ioannis Rotous for his paper "A Pólya Tree modelling framework for batch-mark data". This paper presents a novel Bayesian nonparametric framework for analysing batch-mark data, where animals are marked in groups rather than uniquely, using a Pólya Tree prior on a latent entry–exit grid. The method enables exact and computationally efficient inference on population size and survival in open populations, scaling with the number of sampling occasions rather than individuals. Through simulation studies and two real-world ecological applications, the approach demonstrates ...
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Report – Young-ISA Webinar Joint with the BIR on Statistical Ecology

By Kirsty Hassall posted 09-22-2025
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Report – Young-ISA Webinar Joint with the BIR Committee on Statistical Ecology Gabriel Rodrigues Palma The online event took place on Thursday, April 10th, 2025, as a collaboration between the Young Irish Statistical Association (Young-ISA) and the British and Irish Region (BIR) of the International Biometric Society. The event ran smoothly and offered valuable insights into the field of statistical ecology to a diverse audience. The event had 66 registrations and was attended by 43 unique participants. Prof. Caroline Brophy, Professor in Statistics at Trinity College Dublin, began the session with her presentation on how Statistical Modelling ...
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Report - The Art of Statistical Consultancy including Presidential Address

By Kirsty Hassall posted 05-16-2025
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The Art of Statistical Consultancy including Presidential Address Kirsty Hassall The afternoon event took place on 3rd December, 2024 in the lovely de Hardy room of the London Mathematical Society building in Russell Square. We had a hybrid setup which had a few hitches for which I can only apologise. The meeting was attended by approximately 20 well-fed people. Andrew Mead, Head of Statistics and Data Science at Rothamsted Research, kicked off proceedings with a presentation around Statistical Design for Modern Experiments. Design has a long history in statistics with the first papers published by RA Fisher when he was at Rothamsted in 1923. He was ...
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Prof. Peter Armitage (1924-2024)

By Daniel Farewell posted 02-19-2024
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We are deeply saddened to learn that Prof. Peter Armitage – former President and Honorary Life Member of the International Biometric Society – died last week, aged 99 years. We remember Peter for the depth and breadth of his statistical insight, the kindness and generosity of his dealings with scientific colleagues, and not least for the selflessness of his major retirement project: the Encyclopedia of Biostatistics , co-edited with Ted Colton. There is more detail about Peter's life and work available on the MRC Biostatistics Unit website: https://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/blog/remembering-peter-armitage/ The British and Irish Region of the International ...
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Young Biometrician Award 2023

By Kirsty Hassall posted 09-07-2023
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2023 Young Biometrician Award We are happy to announce that the winner of the 2023 Young Biometrician Award is Dr Oliver Crook , a Florence Nightingale Fellow (Senior Research Associate) in the Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, for his paper “Semi-Supervised Nonparametric Bayesian Modelling of Spatial Proteomics” (The Annals of Applied Statistics, 2022). The panel felt that Oliver’s paper was extremely well written, with a clear description of an impressive technical analysis and implementation of complex stochastic modelling. The paper gave a clear, readable outline of the application area and spatial proteomics, and provided ample justification ...
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Young Biometrician Award 2023

By Kirsty Hassall posted 05-12-2023
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The Young Biometrician Award of the British and Irish Region of the International Biometric Society and the Fisher Memorial Trust The British and Irish Region of the International Biometric Society, jointly with the Fisher Memorial Trust, award a prize every two years for young biometricians who are members of the BIR. Young biometricians are defined as those within 5 years of completing full-time education. The award recognises the research of one paper published, or accepted for publication, in a refereed journal. This award comprises a diploma and a prize of £1000. This is the sixth time the award will be made. We are now making a call for nominations ...
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Report from "It's About Time" (incl. 2022 Presidential Address & AGM)

By Kirsty Hassall posted 02-15-2023
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On 29 November 2022, just over twenty statisticians gathered at the Royal Statistical Society from all corners of Britain and Ireland for the first in-person meeting of our regional biometricians in nearly three years. The meeting began with the society AGM where, after receiving reports from the officers, the most notable item of business was an update of our bylaws to include student representation on the committee. This proposal was passed at the meeting, but also requires the agreement of the society at large. Members have hopefully already been contacted to cast their vote about the proposed changes. The second component of the meeting was called "This ...
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John Addy's report from IBC 2022

By Anestis Touloumis posted 09-29-2022
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The British and Irish Region once again joined forces with the Fisher Memorial Trust (FMT) to offer bursaries to support attendance at the International Biometric Conference at Riga (IBC 2022). John Addy, a bursary recipient, has kindly sent to us a report to share his experience: The 75th International Biometric Conference (IBC) was held in the beautiful and historic Latvian capital Riga in 2022. Riga is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has the largest population of all three Baltic capital cities. The IBC 2022 is the second IBC I have attended and the only international event of its kind run exclusively for statisticians, mathematicians, and biological scientists ...
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Meeting Report - Variational Bayes - 3rd May 2022

By David Hughes posted 05-12-2022
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On 3 rd May 2022, the British and Irish Region of the Biometric Society hosted an online meeting on Variational Bayes. Variational Bayes is a computational method that allows scalable Bayesian inference that can be used as an alternative to the more commonly used Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. The meeting consisted of an introduction to Variational Bayes given in the morning by Dr David Hughes (University of Liverpool). David introduced the basic concepts of variational approximations using a simple example to demonstrate the main ideas. Mean Field Variational Bayes attempts to approximate a complex posterior using a product of simpler distributions. ...
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Ruth King receives RSS Barnett Award

By Daniel Farewell posted 03-14-2022
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Delighted to share the good news that our immediate past-President, Prof. Ruth King, has received the Royal Statistical Society's Barnett Award in recognition of her exceptional work in statistical ecology. The tribute also acknowledges her many contributions to statistics and statisticians more broadly, including her distinguished leadership of the British and Irish Region of the International Biometric Society. See for yourself at https://rss.org.uk/news-publication/news-publications/2022/general-news/announcing-our-honours-recipients-for-2022/ Many congratulations, Ruth!
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Prof. Sir David Cox (1924–2022)

By Daniel Farewell posted 01-20-2022
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Many of you will have heard through other channels the very sad news of the death of Sir David Cox earlier this week. David was an Honorary Life Member of the International Biometric Society, and a longtime friend of our British and Irish Region. Asked at a conference what he worked on, David replied, "Oh, a little bit of this, and a little bit of that". This charming understatement highlights two important aspects of David's life: his extraordinary humility, and the staggering breadth of his contributions to the field of statistics and its applications beyond. We remember David with fondness and gratitude, and send our deepest sympathy to his family, and to ...
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Advanced Topics in Spatial Sampling

By Kirsty Hassall posted 04-12-2021
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A series of events on the topic of advanced spatial sampling was held on the 24 th March 2021. The day was split into two parts with the morning dedicated to a workshop on Spatial sampling: some principles and practicalities and was run by Professor Murray Lark and the afternoon dedicated to a series of three webinars by Professor Janine Illian, Dr Peter Henrys and Dr Eleni Matechou. Both events were run online using zoom and with great participation. We had a sell-out of 31 participants to the morning workshop and around 58 attendees to the free afternoon webinars. The morning workshop focussed on three principles, sampling to estimate the mean, sampling ...
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8th Channel Network Conference, 7-9 April 2021

By Anestis Touloumis posted 10-20-2020
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The 8th Channel Network Conference will take place at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris, France from 7th to 9th of April 2021. There will be two keynote speakers: Jeanine Houwing-Duistermaat (University of Leeds, School of Mathematics, Statistics Institute), Mathias Drton ( Technical University of Munich, Department of Mathematics), and three short courses: Practical deep learning with R, Adaptive group-regularization in prediction, Non-parametric Bayesian methods for classification. The deadline for abstract submission is on 15th January 2021 and for registration is on 25th March 2021 (early bird registration ...
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YBA 2019 winner announced

By Martha Jack posted 01-06-2019
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Young Biometrician Award The British and Irish Region of the International Biometric Society (IBS-BIR), jointly with the Fisher Memorial Trust, award a prize every two years for young biometricians who are members of the British and Irish Region of the International Biometric Society. The award recognises the research of one paper published, or accepted for publication, in a refereed journal. This award comprises a diploma and a prize of £1000 and will be presented at the conference dinner. We are delighted to announce that the BIR-FMT 2019 Young Biometrician Award has been won by Sean Yiu for the paper “Covariate association eliminating weights: a unified ...
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