Program Overview

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Our PhD Statistics is an advanced research degree within our Department of Mathematical Sciences and we have staff members available to act as supervisors across a number of areas within statistics. Possible areas of research include: statistical modelling and smoothing, Bayesian computational statistics, nonparametric statistics, and longitudinal analysis, but interested persons are invited to get in touch with our Department to discuss potential research areas. Our staff are strongly committed to research and teaching. They have published several well-regarded text books and are world leaders in their individual specialisms, with their papers appearing in learned journals such as: Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, Journal of Nonparametric Statistics, Big Data Analytics , and Statistics in Medicine . Our Department of Mathematical Sciences is genuinely innovative and student-focused. Our research groups are working on a broad range of collaborative areas tackling real-world issues. Here are a few examples:

• Our data scientists carefully consider how not to lie, and how not to get lied to with data. Interpreting data correctly is especially important because much of our data science research is applied directly or indirectly to social policies, including health, care and education.
• We do practical research with financial data (for example, assessing the risk of collapse of the UK’s banking system) as well as theoretical research in financial instruments such as insurance policies or asset portfolios.
• We also research how physical processes develop in time and space. Applications of this range from modelling epilepsy to modelling electronic cables.
• Our optimisation experts work out how to do the same job with less resource, or how to do more with the same resource.
• Our pure maths group are currently working on two new funded projects entitled “The Calabi problem for smooth Fano threefolds” and “Stability of Brunn-Minkowski inequalities and Minkowski type problems for nonlinear capacity”.
• We also do research into mathematical education and use exciting technologies such as electroencephalography or eye tracking to measure exactly what a learner is feeling. Our research aims to encourage the implementation of ‘the four Cs’ of modern education, which are critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.

We offer an MSD and MPhil in this subject, and part-time research study is available. You can also start this course in either October, January or April. Why we're great.

• Our department is ranked 31st for research power in the Research Excellence Framework 2021.
• Our Department of Mathematical Sciences has an internationally excellent reputation in areas such as algebraic geometry, group theory, semigroup theory, differential equations, optimisation, probability, applied statistics, bioinformatics and mathematical biology.
• We have a strong track record on knowledge transfer partnerships funded by Innovate UK and ESRC with businesses and governments across the region and beyond.

Our expert staff

The Department of Mathematical Sciences has an international reputation in all areas of Mathematical Sciences including; statistics, operational research, applied mathematics, pure mathematics, and actuarial science. We encourage PhD students to meet with their supervisor regularly. While undertaking your research within Mathematical Sciences, joint supervision across other Essex departments and schools is possible. Joint supervision allows you to have a supervisor based in our Department and another in a relevant Department or School (such as Life Sciences, or Computer Science and Electronic Engineering). At the end of your PhD you may be publishing your research in academic journals. Our PhD students have had papers accepted and published in journals such as: Ecology, Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, Mathematical Modelling of Natural Phenomena , and The North American Journal of Economics and Finance .

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Specialist facilities

The Department of Mathematical Sciences is based in the University’s state-of-the-art STEM Centre. Research students have a dedicated work space and PCs, with access to software such as MATLAB, Gap, SageMath, Python and R. All University of Essex research students have access to our innovative and unique scheme, Proficio . Postgraduate research students are automatically enrolled on Proficio, which provides a variety of training courses, and a fund of up to £2,500 per student for conference attendance and relevant external training courses. Our department is part of MAGIC , a consortium of 22 UK universities which share PhD-level Mathematics courses, giving you access to a wide array of specialist training opportunities.

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Your future

Many of our former PhD students have gone on to work as academics in prominent institutions across the world, such as the University of Cambridge, University of Nottingham and many other international universities. Some have also remained at the University of Essex, working as postdoctoral research fellows, research impact officers, or lecturers. Other graduates have joined organisations like the Met Office, the Ministry of Defence, and companies based in the City of London. There is a high demand for those with a numerate background in all sectors of the economy, so our graduates are sought after in the UK and abroad.