On the occasion of Prof Jim Q. Smith's 70th birthday in 2023, we are delighted to announce a one-day conference to celebrate all of his fantastic work!

This will be a great opportunity to reconnect with Jim and other past and present members/collaborators of the Warwick Statistics department. The details are as follows:

 Date: 18^th May, 2023

 Time: Registration begins at 10am, with talks in the morning and afternoon, followed by a wine reception in the evening. Programme is available here while corresponding abstracts are available here.

 Venue: University of Warwick

Please fill the form below to register your interest. We will update this page with more details shortly.

Note: We can assist with parking on campus and also with booking accommodation on campus. Please indicate on the form below and we will contact you with further details and guidance. The costs, however, will have to be borne by you.

Jim Smith completed his PhD (focused on predicting prison unrest) at Warwick under its inaugural chair, Jeff Harrison. He was excited by the department's Bayesian approach and joined Warwick Statistics as a member of staff in 1976 while still a PhD student. After his PhD, he went briefly to UCL, returning to Warwick in 1984, and has spent the rest of his career here. Jim's research and teaching has advanced the understanding and use of Bayesian methods. He has also made significant contributions in catastrophe theory and algebraic statistics; both are areas in which he is still active.

Much of Jim's work focuses on graphical models, including Bayesian Networks and their dynamic and causal variants. He enjoys exploiting links with pure mathematics as well as multiple advisory roles with government and industry. In 2005, Jim developed a particularly expressive model called a Chain Event Graph, and new methods for selection of Bayesian models. He has a particular interest in developing causal discovery algorithms over new classes of dynamic models. Jim convenes a group of collaborators and PhD students who have developed a rich suite of methodologies.

Jim understands the art of translating complex problems to statistical models. After the Chernobyl disaster, he collaborated with Simon French in the development of decision support systems. The systems elicit expert judgments and allow professionals from many different domains to combine their knowledge effectively in order to plan responses to emergencies. He spent several years as a member of the Food Global Research Priority team working with European Food Standards Agency to elicit expert judgements on food safety. Most recently, he has been engaged in elicitation for global warming induced flood risk to assets. His foundational thinking of relevance and later stories as the vehicle for subjective inference have made him a highly successful applied Bayesian.

Over his long and illustrious career, Jim has published over 200 refereed publications including 3 books so far. He has been a PI on three substantial EPSRC awards, one EU award and CI on dozens of others. Jim has been a Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute since 2016. He was the chairman of RISCU - Warwick’s former consultancy arm - 15 years before acting as a consultant under its replacement AS&RU. Thereby, he has been consistently active in harvesting collaborations with industry and government over the last 30 years.

Jim has always been keen to engage in the training of young statisticians. He has supervised 37 successful PhD students at Warwick, 12 research associates and taught undergraduate courses every year for 40 years. In 2014, he led a successful bid for the CDT - OxWaSP - a unique collaboration between Oxford and Warwick Statistics which ended up training over 70 students working at the interface of AI and Statistics - a vital UK resource at that time. Jim has mentored many PhD students, many now esteemed in their own right. His theatrical presentation style makes him an enthusiastic and much-loved lecturer.