UPDATE 28/10/21: Voting closed at midnight on 13 October and the results are now published.
The Society has elected nine new Council members to begin their term on 1 January 2022.
Council nominated eleven fellows to stand in the election for the nine vacancies (the Society's regulations require that Council put forward two more nominations than the number of vacancies, to ensure that there is a choice about who is elected).
The nominees, in alphabetical order, are:
Tricia Dodd
Tricia is an independent statistical consultant who has worked across a wide range of statistical and research projects. She spent the majority of her career in the civil service, mainly at the Office for National Statistics, but also at the Home Office and as a survey advisor at the Department of Health.
She has considerable experience and expertise in all areas of survey research. She has worked on most of the major government social surveys and has designed and analysed several new studies including the first national survey of prisoners. Her last full-time role was as the Chief Methodology Officer at ONS where she was the head of the Division responsible for the methodology underpinning all of the department’s work. In that role she also chaired committees across government and academia to promote good statistical practice.
She has a particular interest in training and supporting junior statisticians and researchers, having been a mentor to many across her career. She is also a promoter of diversity at work, having been the Diversity Champion at ONS.
She has had two spells as a member of the RSS Social Statistics Section, once as chair, and is currently the meetings secretary. Outside work, she enjoys volunteering for a local charity and she is secretary of her local University of the Third Age.
She was awarded an MBE in 2017 for services to research and statistics
Richard Emsley
Richard is an NIHR research professor and professor of medical statistics and trials methodology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London. Previously he held a personal chair at the University of Manchester, where he studied for both a BSc in mathematics with statistics and a PhD in biostatistics.
Richard’s research interests are in clinical trials methodology and developing statistical methods for the analysis of trials using causal inference approaches. He applies these methods in studies of complex interventions in mental health, notably in people with psychosis, developmental disorders and for suicide prevention. He was the first methodologist to be awarded an NIHR Research Professorship, which aims to encourage the use of more efficient trial designs in mental health.
He is an investigator on the MRC-NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership, and co-lead of its Statistical Analysis Working Group. In 2013, he was the founder of the UK (now European) Causal Inference Meeting. He serves on a number of NIHR funding committees and is vice-chair of the NIHR Statistics Group Executive Committee.
Richard has been a fellow of the RSS since 2003 (GradStat since 2008) and served in a number of roles as: vice chair, Conference and Events Board (2015-16); programme chair, RSS International Conference 2016 in Manchester; member, Medical Section Committee (2013-16); chair, Manchester Local Group (2009-17); committee member, Manchester Local Group (2005-9) and Young Statisticians’ Forum (2005-7). He served on the steering committee for the International Year of Statistics 2013.
Daria Gromyko
Daria has been a member of the Government Statistical Service since 2013, working at the Home Office and at HMRC in a variety of roles relating to national statistics, data science and statistical modelling. Her current role relates to forecasting corporation tax and costing corporation tax policies for budgets, working closely with HM Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility.
Daria is an advocate for maximising the use of administrative data to inform policy decisions, building trust in official statistics by improving data collection processes and improving users’ engagement with official statistics. She is also passionate about making best use of emerging technologies for data collection, analysis and dissemination.
Daria was an active member of the RSS Official Statistics Section committee 2016-20, alternating between the secretary and vice chair roles. During this time she made a substantial contribution to running the section, organising and advertising many events, recruiting new committee members and helping them to become effective in their roles. Daria is also a mentor for career-young statisticians and has contributed articles and talks to StatsLife and the RSS Conference, respectively.
Beverley Hale
Bev is currently professor, learning and teaching, at the University of Chichester where she teaches applied statistics to (often reluctant) students in sport, exercise and health contexts. She enjoys the challenge and relishes sparking student interest in statistical methods. Bev is excited by increasing the rigour of statistical analyses and expanding the statistical methods available to her students and colleagues. She collaborates with local NHS trusts, as well as with an oral surgeon in India, to support clinicians with data analysis. Bev is the consultant statistician for the Occupational Performance Research Group at the University of Chichester which works with the military and emergency services on employment and occupational performance standards. Her position at the university fulfils Bev’s passion for applied statistics and statistical education that grew from her own educational experiences.
Bev became an RSS fellow around 25 years ago and has become increasingly involved in the Society over the past ten years. She has chaired the Statistics in Sport section for the past three years and is a past member of the Discussion Meetings Committee. She has arranged and contributed to a variety of sports statistics and statistical education related talks for local groups and at annual conferences.
Uma Kambhampati
Uma is a professor of economics and head of the School of Politics, Economics and International Relations at the University of Reading. Prior to joining Reading in 1998, Uma graduated from the University of Cambridge, having completed a BA, MPhil and PhD degrees in Economics.
Uma is an applied development economist. Her research therefore has involved the analysis of relatively large datasets relating to developing countries – India, Bangladesh, Kenya and Indonesia – as well as the UK. She is very familiar with socio-economic data on developing countries, both firm level data as well as surveys of individuals and households (census data, labour force surveys, consumption surveys and the demographic and health surveys). Uma’s research has related to inequalities, especially by gender. She uses applied Econometric techniques to analyse these data and investigate issues relating to women’s empowerment, labour market participation and life satisfaction. Over the last two decades, she has also published on issues relating to childhood inequalities, particularly in relation to child work and schooling participation, inequalities between girls and boys as well as inequalities across social and religious groups. Details of her publications can be found at https://www.reading.ac.uk/hedgehogs/about/staff/u-s-kambhampati.aspx.
Uma was a founding member of the International Development Working Group of the Royal Statistical Society which was set up in 2013. Following on from this, she was a member of the International Development Section of the RSS until Autumn 2020. Her main interests are in the use of data to analyse development issues.
Mona Kanaan
Mona Kanaan is a reader (associate professor) in applied health research (statistics) at the Department of Health Sciences, University of York, a senior fellow of HEA (Higher Education Academy) and has been a member of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) for over 22 years.
Mona has over twenty years of experience in designing and conducting randomised controlled trials including cluster and stepped wedge cluster randomised trials (SWRCT) in the fields of public health, social sciences and the criminal justice system. She has spearheaded a conference dedicated to discussing methodological innovations and applications of the SWRCT design. She is a statistician by background who have worked extensively on tobacco related studies in low-middle income countries; currently, she is the statistical Lead and training Lead for the NIHR project ASTRA.
Mona teaches several post-graduate applied statistics modules in Health Sciences and has designed a post-graduate programme to enable foundation year doctors to develop their skills in Health Research Methods and Statistics. She has successfully supervised PhD students and acts as a mentor to early career researchers.
Mona currently serves as the chair of the RSS Medical Section and is a deputy statistics and methodology editor for Addiction. Furthermore, she acts as a reviewer for several funding bodies and journals, and as an independent statistician on study steering committees and on data monitoring committees chairing some of these.
Anthony B Masters
Anthony is a digital insight analyst at Nationwide Building Society. His work focuses on data quality and documentation, methodological issues with administrative sources, institutional bench-marking, and statistical consultancy. Anthony has a MMath and a PhD from the University of Bath. His doctorate looked at the theory of rearrangements and fluid flow problems. After six years of experience in data analysis and statistical communication, Anthony became a Chartered Statistician.
Anthony is a passionate and active member of the RSS, supporting the Society as a RSS Statistical Ambassador. In that voluntary role, he co-authored columns in The Observer with Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter on COVID-19 statistics. In addition, Anthony helped write a guide to understanding coronavirus statistics in April 2020, and authored answers to FAQs on the RSS website. Anthony also provides assistance on statistical matters to journalists and fact-checking organisations, including interpreting opinion polling research. He judged recent RSS journalism awards, and wrote methods documentation for the RSS Stats of the Year 2020 awards. Anthony writes regularly on statistics for general audiences, with explanatory articles on a range of topics: multilevel regression with post-stratification, polling methods, vaccine efficacy calculations and more.
Murray Pollock
Murray is currently a senior lecturer in statistics at Newcastle University, a Turing fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, and an honorary associate professor at the University of Warwick. His research is in computational statistics, and is concerned with practical constraints that arise in modern settings (for instance algorithmic scalability with data size, as in his JRSS-B discussion paper read before the society in 2020, or with privacy constraints). He has taught at both undergraduate and graduate level, has supervised six PhD students, and over 20 M-level dissertations. Before entering academia, Murray spent a number of years in industry working as an actuary in both the USA and Spain (which included leading a team developing a stochastic asset liability model for 120 products across 13 European markets).
Murray has been an active member of the RSS since 2013. This includes being a member of both the West Midlands and North Eastern local group committees. He spent one year as Honorary Secretary, and three years as chair of the West Midlands local group, during which time there were 33 speakers with average attendance of 35. In addition he organised the 70th anniversary celebrations of the group in 2015. Out-with the auspices of the RSS he has organised 15 multi-day conferences, and a number of seminar series and reading groups. He has prior committee experience, which includes the advisory committee of APTS, student union executive bodies, and as an NUS Scotland delegate.
Rich Pugh
Richard is chief data scientist at Mango Solutions (an Ascent Company), has over 20 years experience in the statistical and data science arena, and is a recognised member of the DataIQ 100. After studying mathematics and statistics at the University of Bath, Richard worked as a statistician in the pharmaceutical industry. Here, Richard combined his passion for statistical modelling with his interest in programming to apply primarily GLM and survival models in a repeatable manner. Richard then moved into the world of consulting, applying his knowledge across a range of industries including Financial Services, Retail and Insurance.
In 2002, he co-founded Mango, a company that provides statistical consulting services based on the R language. As a core member of the R community, Richard started the LondonR and EARL events, was the first RConsortium Chair, and co-authored the 'R in 24 Hours' book. Within the RSS, Richard has been involved in the Data Science Section since its inception. An active member of the committee, and currently the meeting secretary, he has been heavily involved in holding a number of events (including running three sessions at the RSS Conference) on the intersection of statistics and data science.
Richard leads the consulting team at Ascent, whose purpose is to inspire and educate customers on the possibilities of data and (advanced) analytics. In this role, Richard works largely with leadership teams from commercial organisations, helping them to create impactful data strategies that apply analytics to create more data-driven organisations.
Rejina Verghis
Rejina is a biostatistician at Parexel International. Rejina has worked at Northern Ireland Clinical Trials Unit for over ten years before moving to the industry. She completed BSc in Mathematics, MSc in Biostatistics from India. She is currently completing her PhD at the Queen’s University of Belfast. Her research interests include survival analysis, joint modelling, and standardisation outcome measures in clinical trials.
Rejinahas been an RSS fellow for almost 11 years and been through stages from being a Graduate Statistician to Chartered Statistician. She serves as the treasurer for Northern Ireland Local Group. She is particularly interested in improving statistical literacy and serves as a member of the Improving Statistics Literacy working group at the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Statistics Group. She is also a STEM ambassador, promoting STEM subjects among school children.
David Smallbone
David is a director in KPMG's Infrastructure Advisory Group specialising in ‘InfraTech’: the digital technologies and data analytics that help organisations get better outcomes from their physical infrastructure and assets. His interests lie in statistical tools and techniques for modelling assets and infrastructure, including the ‘holy grail’ of predictive maintenance: knowing when something is expected to fail with sufficient time to act. He also has a passion for great data visualisation, the most powerful tool in the statistician’s kit.
David followed up mathematical sciences at Queen’s College, Oxford with a MSc in statistics at University of Kent. This proved the foundation for a career helping people make better decisions based on the data available, with an understanding of the risks and limitations. It has seen him work with planes (NATS), trains (Network Rail) and automobiles (Babcock) as well as clients across transport, utilities, retail and defence in his roles at KPMG and AMCL.
Having picked up his GradStat as a Young Statistician, David joined (and now chairs) the Business & Industrial Section. Through hosting sessions and presenting at RSS events he regularly engages our ‘customers’: the practitioners in industry and academia, and will bring their views to Council.