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SPCR trainee Chris Morton at Keele University wins the Tessella Industry Prize for the `Best Computational MSc Statistics Dissertation’ and the Postgraduate Statistics Centre Prize for `Learning Excellence’ on the MSc in Statistics from Lancaster University. The prizes were awarded for the outstanding quality of his dissertation and for his overall performance on the course.

Chris undertook his MSc in Statistics at Lancaster University in 2016/17 - just before becoming a School trainee - and for which he received a distinction. Funding for the MSc enabled Chris to lay the statistical groundwork for his SPCR funded PhD. 

"My dissertation 'Analysis of the illness-death model under interval censoring: application to dental data' was supervised by Dr. Andrew Titman. The illness-death model is a multi-state model that is often used in medical settings where death may first be preceded by an intermediary 'illness' state. However, the nature of the project was quite theoretical rather than applied. I chose it because my PhD will require me to consider a range of time-to-event and longitudinal models, so I was gathering experience in that area."

Chris' PhD investigates the duration of glucocorticoid treatment for patients with polymyalgia rheumatica (inflammatory condition, largely in hips and shoulders, causing severe pain and stiffness), in particular what factors predict this and whether repeated longitudinal pain/stiffness markers for patients provide additional information on the course of their treatment. 

Each year the Department of Mathematics and Statistics awards a number of prizes to Statistics Masters’ students who have consistently demonstrated high-levels of achievement in terms of their general conduct, in-class contribution, coursework, examinations and dissertation.


The prizes will be formally awarded on Wednesday 13 December 2017 at Lancaster University.