The main piece of work this term was working on two research topics. To give us inspiration we had 12 sessions on different topics, where three experts would come and give us a lecture on a specific area of their field. These included “Logistics, Transportation and Operations”, “Structured Data” and “Spectral Methods for Time Series and Spatial Data” among many others. We were then asked to pick two to look into further. The first task was to produce a seven page report on a topic along with an overview that would be suitable for a non-academic audience. For this I chose “Stochastic Dynamic Optimisation” with Rob Shone and looked into how we can use dynamic programming to help make decisions in queuing models. The second task was to produce a longer report, of between 15-20 pages, as well as a presentation that would be given to the STOR-i cohort. My choice for this was “Computational Statistics” with Chris Sherlock where I looked into non-reversible Markov chain Monte Carlo.

Another key part of the term were the masterclasses given by professors from other universities. I won’t go too much into the content here since I have written a separate blog post for each, but the provided a welcome break from our research topics and gave a look at new ideas we had not previously seen at Lancaster.

We also had problem solving days, where companies would come and present a problem they had encountered in industry and wanted to see how a group of students would tackle it. The four days we had we put on by Elsevier looking at improving the recommender system on their Mendeley product, BBC working out how to best cluster their user base, Tesco who wanted to know how to price their petrol compared to their competitors and Northwestern electricity trying to look for anomalies in their asset database. All were an interesting look into how the skills developed in a PhD program can be applied directly to real world problems that companies are facing.

Finally, my last task was writing this blog throughout the term, which I hope you have found interesting. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me through the contact form above.

The term started off with a couple days away up in the lake district with members of staff and the first year PhD students. We were put into different groups throughout the days, doing team building tasks such as canoeing and creating t-shirts.

The term itself was split into two distinct halves: lectures and topic sprints. We had four modules each giving an introduction to a different aspect of statistics and operational research. These were entitled Inference and Modelling, Stochastic Simulation, Deterministic Optimisation and Probability and Stochastic Processes. 

In the second half we were introduced to a new module for STOR-i – contemporary topic sprints. Every week we were placed into groups of four, and attended a lecture on Monday morning given by an expert in a field. They would then introduce a new topic to us and give a list of references for further reading. The remainder of the week would then be spent in our groups producing presentations to give to the expert along with an examiner from STOR-i to show what we had achieved.

To finish off the term we went for a Christmas meal to Quite Simply French, a great small restaurant in Lancaster. In all I had a great time in my first term as a STOR-i mRes and am looking forward to the next year.