Royal Statistical Society 2017 annual conference

There was a strong presence at the Royal Statistical Society 2017 annual conference, which was held in Glasgow from Monday 4th to Thursday 7th September. Prof Adrian Bowman gave the opening plenary talk, on the title "Surfaces, Shapes and Anatomy" and Prof Dirk Husmeier gave a talk entitled "Statistical inference of drivers of collective cell movement". PhD students Alan Lazarus, Diana Giurghita and Mihaela Paun, and research assistant Dr Mu Niu also gave talks while PhD students Michela Pasetto and Umberto Noe presented a joint poster.

Postgraduate student, Qingying Shu won one of three poster prizes at the conference. Her poster was chosen from more than 50 and the title of the poster was "The use of online change-point detection methods for space weather storms". Qingying holds a College sensor studentship, working jointly with Physics and Astronomy, Engineering and our School.

Not only did Prof Adrian Bowman give the opening plenary talk but also in the evening, he was to be found performing stand-up comedy in the Buff Club downtown. (True!). This was part of a “144” event organised by the President of the RSS – can 1 person say something interesting and entertaining in a maximum of 4 minutes and with a maximum of 4 slides? (Actually, Adrian didn’t have any slides.)