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Research

For over 20 years Lancaster University has been at the forefront of the UK research effort in statistics and operational research, and is internationally leading in these areas. It has established an enviable track record of theoretical innovation arising from real world challenges. STOR-i builds on this by linking with leading UK industries, encouraging an integrated approach to STOR research between academia and industry.

STOR research at Lancaster

The Statistics and Operational Research (STOR) group is at the forefront of research in Europe and beyond. We have internationally recognized expertise that ranges widely across forecasting, optimization, simulation, statistical modelling and inference, with a particularly strong focus on computationally intensive approaches. This group have ranked in the top five universities in the UK in every review of RAE/REF since 1992. Other indicators of Lancaster’s leadership of the STOR discipline include:

  • Current research grant income is over £10M from a range of funders including several national research councils;
  • Leading national and international research programmes, e.g. £5M EPSRC Prosperity;
  • Partnership with BT(Eckley); £2.8M StatScale programme (Eckley, Fearnhead); £2.3M OR-MASTER programme (Zografos, Glazebrook);
  • Major awards from the Royal Statistical Society (Diggle, Eckley, Fearnhead, Tawn, Wadsworth), the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (Glazebrook, Nelson, Zografos) and the Operational Research Society (Pidd, Zografos), Adams Prize (Fearnhead) and Edgeworth-Pareto (Ehrgott);
  • Leading scientific programmes at the Isaac Newton Institute, e.g. Statistical Scalability (Eckley and Fearnhead); Scalable Inference; statistical, algorithmic, computational aspects (Fearnhead);
  • Two of the five academic STOR members on the mathematical sciences sub-panel for REF2014 and REF2021 are LU staff (2014: Fearnhead, Glazebrook, 2021: Fearnhead, Letchford).

Research Philosophy

At the core of STOR-i’s research philosophy is an integrated approach with a continual research cycle, encompassing methodology and application within statistics, OR and industry.

Existing STOR research at Lancaster University focuses on methodological innovation motivated by, and fed back into, substantive applications arising from collaborations with the natural, biomedical and social sciences, as well as industry. STOR-i builds on this approach, putting an increased emphasis on genuine collaborative research at the interface of statistics, OR and industry. Research output will embrace key methodological advances as well as answers to specific scientific and industrial questions.

How does industry play a part in the STOR-i research philosophy?

STOR-i focuses on fully integrated collaboration with industry ensuring that the true structure of the problem is incorporated into STOR methodological development and analysis. The majority of our industrial partners have substantial teams of in-house analysts and have a common interest and awareness of the need for high quality methodological research. Collaboration with STOR-i involves the development of advanced STOR methods, leading to significant impact in both academic and industrial circles.

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Research Management Skills

Students have the opportunity to develop research management skills by producing written proposals to a research fund. This is specifically to encourage research adventure and international collaboration, and through managing the award if successful. In addition successful students will plan and undertake the supervision of a STOR-i research intern to support this work.

Publications

A list of all the publications produced or in press from our current students and recent alumni.

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