Professor Idris Eckley, of Lancaster’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics and Co-Director of Lancaster’s Data Science Institute, has been honoured with the Society’s Greenfield Industrial Medal for his ‘contributions to substantive industrial research problems’.

The Society’s citation highlights Professor Eckley’s ‘high-quality research on change points and non-stationary time series has made a substantial impact on a range of multinational companies. He has also led an exceptional culture change in the scale and diversity of industrially collaborative research in statistical doctoral training’.

Professor Eckley is Co-Director of the EPSRC-funded STOR-i Centre for Doctoral Training. Since its inception in 2010, STOR-i has worked with more than 80 industrial partners on a range of collaborations, including co-funded PhD projects.

In addition, Professor Eckley is Principal Investigator of the £2.8M EPSRC StatScale programme grant, developing the next generation statistical methods for streaming data - a collaboration between researchers at Lancaster University and the University of Cambridge. He is also Co-Investigator of the Next-Generation Converged Digital Infrastructure programme, an EPSRC Prosperity Partnership with BT.

Dr Alexander Belton, Head of Lancaster’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics, said: “The award of the Greenfield Industrial Medal gives well-deserved recognition to Professor's Eckley outstanding contributions to industrial statistics. He is a leading figure in the development and application of changepoint methods, which are having a huge impact on business and within academia.

This prize also serves as a reminder of the excellence of the pioneering work being done by STOR-i, which is a joint venture between the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and Lancaster University Management School."

Professor Eckley is one of three Lancaster academics to have been honoured by the Royal Statistical Society this year. Professor Peter Diggle and Dr Emanuele Giorgi, both of the Lancaster Medical School, received the RSS Barnett Award and Lecture for environmental statistics and the RSS Research Prize, respectively.