President and vice presidents

Our President represents the best of our Society and the discipline of statistics and as chair of our Council, has a decisive influence on our policy and activities.

We now select our Presidents based on their acknowledged statistical achievements and contribution to the progress of the discipline. Past Presidents have included former Prime Minister, Harold Wilson and social reformer Sir William Beveridge, as well as experts from the field such as William Guy, a 19th century luminary. Go to our Past Presidents page to find out more.

Current President - Professor Sir John Aston 
John is the Harding Professor of Statistics in Public Life, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Cambridge. An applied statistician, he has previously worked at the US Census Bureau, Academia Sinica (Taiwan) and the University of Warwick. John also recently finished as a Non-Executive Director of the UK Statistics Authority. His research interests include medical imaging and healthcare statistics, statistical linguistics and official statistics. 

 From 2017-2020, John was the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Home Office. In this role, he helped provide statistical and more general scientific advice to the Home Secretary, Home Office ministers and officials, and as part of the Chief Scientific Adviser Network across government. In this capacity, he was involved in the UK’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. As CSA, he was an ex-officio member of the council of the Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) from 2018-2020. 

 John joined the RSS in 2008. He served on the Research Section Committee 2011-2014, including as secretary from 2013-2014. He was also a member of the Academic Affairs Advisory Group while he was Committee of Professors of Statistics chair from 2016-2018. He also served on the group which developed the Society’s strategy for 2024-29 and is the chair of the Statistics Under Pressure steering group. 

Vice presidents

Professor Clare Morris, VP for Professional Affairs
Clare Morris is Emeritus Professor at the University of Gloucestershire and an associate lecturer in statistics for the Open University, with a long career including periods at Warwick and Cardiff Business Schools. She has a strong focus on the teaching of statistics to non-specialists and has written, co-authored and edited a number of successful texts. She has acted as a consultant and statistical trainer for organisations in both public and private sectors.

Clare was an early recipient of Chartered Statistician status, has been an elected member of Council, acted as secretary of the Business and Industrial section, chaired the Quality Improvement Section and edited the Series C journal. She now chairs the Professional Affairs Committee and is an RSS university accreditation assessor.

She has a particular interest in standards and accreditation, having been an Assistant Director at the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and a university auditor. She has chaired university reviews in locations including Estonia and New Zealand and has delivered training on quality and standards in Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Scott Heald, VP for External Affairs
Scott is Director of Data & Digital Innovation and Head of Profession for Statistics at Public Health Scotland.  Scott has worked in the health and care field for over 25 years and leads the directorate responsible for the collection, access and use of data to derive insight and drive innovation in how Scotland protects and improves health.  As Head of Profession for Statistics, he has the authority for deciding on methods, content and timing of the release of all official statistics produced by Public Health Scotland.  

 Scott has been active in the RSS throughout his career – heavily involved with the Edinburgh local group, has served on Council between 2011 and 2012, and has held two honorary officer roles – remuneration and staffing (between 2013 to 2016) and most recently conferences and events (2021 to 2024).  Scott was also a member of the RSS Covid-19 task force. He was awarded the RSS Chambers medal for outstanding services to the Society in 2017. 

Professor Richard Samworth, VP for Academic Affairs
Professor Richard Samworth is Professor of Statistical Science and Director of the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. His main research interests are in statistical methodology and theory, and particularly in high-dimensional and nonparametric statistics. He received the COPSS Presidents' Award in 2018, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2021 and completed a term as co-editor of the Annals of Statistics from 2019-2021.

Richard was an elected RSS Council member from 2012-2015, and has served as an Associate Editor for JRSSB, a member and Honorary Secretary of the Research Section and on the Honours Committee, among other roles. He was awarded the RSS Research prize in 2008 and the Guy Medal in Bronze in 2012.

Dr Sophie Carr, VP for Education and Statistical Literacy
Sophie trained as an aeronautical engineer and whilst working on flight trials became interested in the concept of information overload. She completed a part time PhD in Bayesian Belief Networks whilst working and in 2009, redundancy provided a unique opportunity for her to set up her own company, Bays Consulting, which specialises in data science and statistical analysis. A crucial part of her work is explaining the results of the analysis to increase people’s ability to understand, articulate and engage with the values and statistics that impact key business projects, initiatives and insights.

In 2020, Sophie was elected to the RSS Council where she sits on the Audit and Risk committee and the Official Statistics Section committee. Sophie is also a member of the Society’s Data Science Task Force and is a founding committee member of the newly formed Statistical Engineering special interest group. Also enjoying applied mathematics, Sophie also serves on the Council of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications whom she represents on the Alliance for Data Science Professionals.

Outside of work, Sophie currently holds the title of the World’s Most Interesting Mathematician and takes part in STEM outreach through activities such as writing and delivering Royal Institution Masterclasses on a range of statistics topics to help enthuse and engage the next generation in developing a love of data and statistics.