News

Professor David Hobson has been elected to the Council of the Bachelier Society, for a four year term of office.

The Bachelier Finance Society is the primary academic organisation for the exchange and promulgation of ideas in mathematical finance. The objective of the Bachelier Finance Society is, through international contacts, the advancement of the discipline of finance through the application of the theory of stochastic processes, statistics and mathematics. The role of Council is to formulate the policies of the Society.

http://www.bachelierfinance.org/

http://www.rssenews.org.uk/articles/20120111

David Firth is to receive the 2012 Guy Medal in Silver, awarded annually by the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) for outstanding published research. The RSS citation for the award mentions specifically David's influential work on exit-polling and election-night forecasting, as well as extensive contributions to statistical theory, methodology, computing and applications in social science.

The same award was made in 2008 to Professor Gareth Roberts, and in 1987 to Emeritus Professor John Copas (former Head of Department).

The current Head of Department comments: "We at Warwick Statistics are very fortunate indeed to have such distinguished colleagues --- and of course I am absolutely delighted to have become one of the Guys!"

David's homepage: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/dfirth

Professor Simon French, the recently appointed Director of the Risk Initiative and Statistical Consultancy Unit, has been awarded an honorary fellowship of the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management. The award took place at the IIRSM’s Luncheon at the House of Lords on September 27. In making the award, Geoff Lloyd, the deputy chairman of IIRSM’s Board, cited Professor French’s work in helping assess, analyse and communicate risk in a range of contexts from nuclear energy to health and food safety. Professor French expressed his delight on receiving the fellowship and thanked the many colleagues with whom he had worked over the years. He singled out the support of his family for special mention and in particular thanked his daughters for teaching him more about risk than he really wished to know!

Firth, Johansen, Kendall and others have been awarded an EPSRC grant of £144k as follow-on funding for operating APTS through till September 2016.