PhD Opportunities in Statistics at St Andrews, 2022-2023

Rhona Rodger
Monday 10 January 2022

Applications are welcomed for students wishing to undertake a PhD in Statistics at the University of St Andrews.  Full funding (fees, plus stipend of approx. £15,840) is available for well-qualified students. We encourage applications as soon as possible to maximize your chances of being funded.  UK, EU and other overseas students are all encouraged to apply.  New PhD students would typically start in September 2022, but this is flexible.

Members of the Statistics Division at St Andrews are particularly active in the fields of statistical ecology, and in statistical medicine and molecular biology.  Other research areas include Bayesian statistical inference, computer-intensive inference, data mining, data smoothing and latent state models.

General applications from potential students interested in these areas are welcome.  We are also looking for candidates for the following specific projects. View more details of these, the PhD environment and the application process (pdf).

Specific projects

(supervisor in brackets)

  • Statistical models for digital ecological surveys (David Borchers)
  • Object classification from mobile and static sensor feeds (Carl Donovan)
  • Trading in peer-to-peer (P2P) markets (Carl Donovan)
  • The molecular biology of (prostate) cancer (Andy Lynch)
  • Investigating modes of action of genetic risk variants through integrated analysis of multiple high-dimensional “omics” data (Andy Lynch and Michail Papathomas)
  • Identifying complex spatio-temporal biomarkers of brain diseases (Nicolò Margaritella and Michail Papathomas)
  • Statistical inference for stochastic dynamical systems in biology (2 projects) (Giorgos Minas and Jochen Kursawe)
  • Strategies for detecting high probability dependence structures (Michail Papathomas)
  • Bayesian identifiability for log-linear models (Michail Papathomas)
  • Detecting prevalent clusters of Multimorbidity with uncertainty evaluation using Bayesian Mixture Modelling and subsampling (Michail Papathomas and Nicolò Margaritella)
  • Modelling local population dynamics for whale sharks in the Maldives (Hannah Worthington)

In addition to the above, there is a fully funded scholarship available for the following project:

Informal enquiries

For informal discussion about any matter related to PhDs at St Andrews please contact Prof. Len Thomas [email protected].

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