Invited topic sessions
Invited topic sessions and workshops are put together by an individual (you do not need to be a RSS Fellow), group of individuals, an organisation or a RSS committee with a panel of speakers who they invite to speak on a related topic. The session topic should ideally fit within one of the topic
streams for the conference.
The proposed session is considered by the RSS conference board for inclusion on the programme. The conference is intended to cover the full range of sectors working with statistics and data science including academia, business, industry, government and public sector.
The following invited sessions and workshops have been accepted for the 2026 programme (as at January 2026):
Applications in business, industry & finance
- Statistical Engineering
- AI & The Future of Quality Improvement
Communicating & teaching statistics
- Biomedical Research Study Design: Back to Basics in the Age of AI
- Debating the “rules” of data visualisation
- Prize for Doctoral Scholarship and Research in Statistics Education
- Students as Partners: Co-Creating the Future of Statistics Education
- Humanising Statistics and Coding through Emotionally Intelligent Teaching
- Data for change: Communicating statistics
- Take the Lead: Re-thinking public engagement with health data and statistics
Data science & AI
- Lessons from AI in deployment
- 10 key skills for Data Science that Universities are failing to teach
- Demystifying AI for the Public and Collaborators
- A Deregulatory Approach to AI: Good or Bad?
- AI Task Force - update of activities in the past year
- From Data Privacy to Synthetic Data: Statistical Dilemmas in AI and Federated Learning in Health Data
- From Surveys to Maps: Graph Learning, Flow Constraints and Pre-trained Neural Network Priors for Accelerated Disease Surveillance
- Developments in information theory and measurement, with application to biological signalling systems and gene networks.
Environmental & spatial statistics
- AI and impact on climate
- Integrating Topology, Geometry, and Dynamical Systems into Spatial Statistics Methodology
- Turning Data into Action: Statistics for Wildfire Management
- Advances in Auxiliary-Driven Spatially Balanced Sampling
Medical statistics
- Complexities and Dissemination of Data Analysis in the Psychedelic Space
- Bayesian SITAR growth curve analysis
- Statistical inference for biophysical modelling in healthcare
- Bayesian Causal & Decision-Focused Methods for Longitudinal Health Data
- Statistics and AI for clinical diagnosis
- Advanced Statistical Methods for Biomarker-Driven Research
Methods & theory
- Methodological Advancements in Causal Inference
- Recent Methodological Advances in Change-Point Analysis
- Some new perspectives on causation and the foundations of modelling
- JRSS Series B Joint Editors invited session
- Subgroup selection in clinical trials and other applications
- Modern Approaches for Missing and Incomplete Data Analysis
- Statistical inference in genomics
- Modern Approaches to Robust and Explainable Inference
- Advances in random matrix theory
- Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in Causal Inference
- Advanced dimensionality reduction methods for complex data
- Challenges in the analysis of complex data by latent variable models
- New statistical paradigms for generative AI
- New frontiers in time series modelling and inference
- Recent advances in missing data
- Scalable Computations for High-Dimensional Hidden Markov Models
Official statistics & public policy
- Population dynamics: Leveraging Administrative and Emerging Data Sources to better measure the movement of people.
- Workshop: Maximising policy impact through engagement and partnership-building.
- ASHE: Rise of the Phoenix
- ONS statistics and analysis that serve the public good: population and migration statistics and their cross-government uses
- Tales from the Basket: Producing price statistics in the data revolution
- Public statistics: reality or dream?
- Census 2031 - design, innovation and testing
- Topics in International Development: Automation of statistical processes for data collection and calculation of policy relevant indicators
Other applications of statistics
- Papers from JRSS-C on the topic of data fusion
- Uncertainty quantification of stochastic modelling in proton beam therapy
- Evaluating impact in higher education: challenges and methodology in real-world settings
- Algorithmic decision-support in the law
- What to do about statistical issues in medical misconduct cases?
- Closing the gender data gap; the evolution of analytics in women's sport
- Ahead of the Games: Predicting Glasgow 2026
- Statistical Modelling in Sport
Prize winners
- Best presentations from RSC and YSM 2025
- Statistical storytelling: Significance prize winners
Professional development
- Statistical Modelling with Semantic Features
- Learn from my mistakes: career advice from highly experienced statisticians
- Introducing our Data Ethics Case Studies
- Plotting your path: Women in statistics and data science share their stories
- Develop your data skills: How to keep learning with TidyTuesday
- Building Sustainable Research Communities: Strategies for Capacity, Collaboration, and Impact
- Statisticians for Society
- Collaboration at Scale: How Statisticians Use Git & GitHub in Practice
- Building Mentoring and other Personal Career Development Activities in statistical networks
- Elevating Statistics: Working Smarter with Cloud Compute
- Embedding Equity: Experiences, Challenges, and Impact of Athena Swan Initiatives in Statistics
- Scaling Large Data, Simplified
- Beyond the basics of literate programming
Social & wellbeing statistics
- Why social surveys will continue to play an important role in the UK data landscape
- Designing Statistically Efficient National Educational Studies: The Role of Simulation
- Comparative judgement: stimulating methodological developments
- JRSS-A Editors' Invited Session
- Survey mode effects in practice