Earlier this week, STOR-i PhD graduate Lucy Morgan was honoured to receive the KD Tocher Medal alongside co-authors Andrew Titman, Dave Worthington and Barry L Nelson for their paper 'A spline function method for modelling and generating a nonhomogeneous poisson process', which was developed during Lucy's PhD study. The medal was awarded by the Operational Research Society at The Royal Society during the Blackett Lecture, and is given 'in recognition of the most outstanding contribution to the philosophy, theory or practice of simulation published in the Journal of Simulation'.

Lucy now leads the simulation team within The Strategy Unit, a specialist NHS internal consultancy team producing high-quality, multi-disciplinary analytical work - and helping people to apply the results.

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.”