Kieran Drury
I am a first-year student in the Warwick Maths and Stats CDTLink opens in a new window with interests in researching statistical decision support systems, focusing on a relatively new class of such systems known as 'Integrating Decision Support Systems' (IDDSs). An IDSS is used to model massive systems such as those behind national food security levels or nuclear emergency responses that other statistical modelling techniques would struggle to handle, especially in light of the lack of complete data for such large systems. It utilises experts from a range of different domains, forming a number of panels that each perform local modelling as part of the larger composite system. With the use of data, where available and appropriate, and structured expert judgement elicitation within a graphical model framework, a well-constructed IDSS allows a decision centre to make justifiable, defensible and coherent policy choices that best manage the complex system behind the decision problem they face.
Prior to starting my PhD, I completed a 4-year BSc MMORSELink opens in a new window degree at the University of Warwick in the Department of Statistics. My Masters dissertation was on network-searching algorithms, taking a computational and theoretical approach to optimising a search on an network whose structure is unknown to a searcher. The searcher only learns the structure of the network as they traverse it, remembering which edges they have travelled along (and in which direction), and remembering which edges they have not traversed at all. This was under the supervision of Professor Steve AlpernLink opens in a new window.
I presented my Masters research at the 2023 LSE-Warwick Workshop on Search Games and PatrollingLink opens in a new window, and I also attended the 2023 Workshop on Statistical Analysis of Networks at the University of Warwick.
Aside from statistics, I enjoy many sports such as trampolining, badminton and snooker. I also speak Spanish and have studied Spanish modules up to Level C1 of the Common European Framework through the Language CentreLink opens in a new window as part of my undergraduate degree.
