Four Lancaster University-linked researchers have claimed a prestigious Operational Research (OR) Society award for their work in the field of simulation.

Dr Lucy E Morgan, Professor Barry Nelson, Professor Andrew Titman, and Dr David Worthington won the KD Tocher Medal. The medal is awarded in recognition of the most outstanding contribution to the philosophy, theory or practice of simulation published in the Journal of Simulation over a two-year period.

The award for the paper A spline function method for modelling and generating a nonhomogeneous poisson process was presented during The OR Society's Blackett Lecture at The Royal Society.

Dr Morgan was a PhD researcher in the STOR-i Centre for Doctoral Training that sits across Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) and the School of Mathematical Sciences. She completed the paper as part of her studies, along with supervisors Dr Worthington, who retired as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management Science earlier this year, and Professor Titman, a Professor of Statistics. They were joined in the authorship by Professor Nelson, Walter P. Murphy Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University, and a Visiting Professor in LUMS who served at Dr Morgan’s third PhD supervisor.

Their work is in Simulation, a field of Operational Research, where mathematics and statistics are used to model and better understand real-life processes. Arrival processes are important in this work, and Dr Morgan’s PhD research made important progress in devising appropriate formulae to represent them.

Professor Adam Letchford, Head of the Department of Management Science in LUMS, said: “I am delighted for Dave, Lucy, Andrew and Barry to receive this medal. It reflects the great work on computer simulation that has been done in Lancaster for many years.

“The methodology developed in the paper is designed to improve the management of queues, which play a key role in healthcare, retail, telecommunications, defence, and many other contexts”.

Dr Morgan is now Analytics Manager (Simulation) at The Strategy Unit in the NHS and retains a Visiting Researcher role in the Department of Management Science.

She said: “I am honoured to be a recipient of the KD Tocher Medal. This recognition is a testament to the collective effort and support I received during my PhD training from both my supervisors, who were also co-authors, and the STOR-i Centre for Doctoral Training. I am sincerely grateful to The OR Society for this distinction.”

Professor Nelson added: “This was a particularly satisfying collaboration. Lucy, of course, did the heavy lifting, but I remember some very creative ideas from Andrew, Dave keeping us practically grounded, and me providing simulation context.”

KD Tocher, for whom the award is named, was a British scholar who wrote the first book on systems simulation, The Art of Simulation, in 1963. The award citation for this year’s winners from the OR Society states: “[The article] addresses a significant challenge in simulation input modelling by developing methodological innovation, providing the first systematic spline-based approach for NHPP rate function estimation with penalised likelihood.

“The technical quality is exceptional, demonstrated through comprehensive comparative evaluation, systematic treatment of input modelling error propagation, and robust experimental design.

“The real-world impact could influence how the simulation community approaches NHPP input modelling with broad applicability. The writing is excellent, effectively bridging theoretical development with practical implementation concerns through clear mathematical exposition and appropriate experimental presentation.”