Professor Sylvia Richardson (born 1953) is one of the leading statisticians worldwide. She has made several seminal and ground breaking contributions to the field of statistics, with particular focus on statistics in bio-medicine. Richardson is Professor in Biostatistics at Cambridge University, UK, and a visionary and inspiring Director of the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge.
Sylvia Richardson´s scientific achievements and the broad and deep impact of her work demonstrate the crucial role that statistics plays in the health sciences and clinical practice, and the importance of applying and disseminating statistical methods to a broad range of biomedical research.
Together with her many students, she has advanced the theory of Bayesian statistics in several directions. Her work in spatial statistics has improved small area studies of environment and health. Her current research focuses on integrative Bayesian analysis in epidemiology, systems biology and genomics, and in developing methods and computational tools for the analysis of high dimensional biomedical data. These themes are extremely important in modern biomedical research, due to the rapidly increasing availability of complex, high-dimensional datasets deriving from clinical trials, DNA sequencing, proteomics, metabolomics and imaging, and her extensive track record places her at the forefront of statistical developments in this domain.
Sylvia Richarson holds a PhD from University of Nottingham and a Doctorat d’Etat des Sciences Mathematiques from Université de Paris Sud. She has earlier been the Directeur de Recherches at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research and Professor at Imperial College in London. Her research has been recognised by a number of prestigious awards, including the 2009 Guy Medal in Silver from the Royal Statistical Society, and the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award for outstanding scientists. She is Elected Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences, for her exceptional contributions to the medical sciences.
Sylvia Richardson generously collaborates with the departments of Mathematics and Biostatistics, University of Oslo. She has been a member of the scientific advisory board of the Oslo center Statistics for Innovation and is currently affiliated with the Center for Research-based Innovation BigInsight.