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 for the approach. The modelling required was challenging, but Oliver’s dealt with each issue carefully and thoroughly and the end result was genuinely innovative and, ultimately, should prove useful to biologists – especially as software used in the paper has been included in an existing R package.
The judges also felt that another nominee warranted an honourable mention – namely Dr John Addy, a Statistical Data Scientist, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, for his work “A heteroskedastic model of Park Grass spring hay yields in response to weather suggests continuing yield decline with climate change in future decades” (Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 2022).
The panel agreed that John’s work was a high-quality interdisciplinary paper, with advanced statistical models applied rigorously to an important long-term grasslands data set in the context of climate change. The findings are clearly explained and the implications for society highlighted – this is likely to be a highly cited paper.
The panel of three judges comprised Professors Rosemary Bailey (University of St Andrews, representing the FMT), Elizabeth Thompson (University of Washington, international judge) and Mark Brewer (BIOSS, representing the BIR).