Summary
On the 30th of June 2016, the University of Aberdeen hosted the inaugural Young Researchers Using Statistics Symposium 2016 (YRS2016; https://www.abdn.ac.uk/clsm/events/10092/) at the Suttie Centre, Forresterhill. The event was organised by the Young Statisticians’ Section of the Royal Statistical Society Highland Local Group, comprising statisticians at the University of Aberdeen Medical Statistics Group, members of the Health Services Research Unit (HSRU) and Biomathematics Scotland (BioSS).
YRS2016 was a great success with over 50 participants from Scottish research institutions and universities. Professor Craig Ramsay, director of HSRU, instilled the audience with his love for statistics in the inaugural presentation and immediately set the audience a fun maths quiz. There was a first session of scientific presentations covering ecological and environmental topics and a second focusing on human health and socio-economics. Finally, a wide range of topics also featured at the poster session, including food studies and genetics.
The variety and high quality of the research showcased at the symposium made it extremely difficult for the jury to choose the recipients of two prizes; Francesca Mancini won the best presentation award (£50) for her work “Using Flickr to investigate patterns in wildlife tourism activities in Scotland” and Davina Derous won the poster award (£20) with a depiction of her research on “Topological rearrangement of hypothalamic ageing networks”. Simon Sawhney received the maths quiz certificate.
Professor Sir Ian Diamond, former Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, came along to help with judging, and then presented the prizes to the worthy winners. Thereafter, he closed the event with an inspiring talk highlighting the importance of statistics and the relevance of such events to develop and maintain a young generation of statistics users within an encouraging and supportive networking environment.
Further information on the event can be found in the book of proceedings here...
and on the storify highlighting presence in Twitter
Feedback
YRS 2017
Given the success of this inaugural event and the encouraging feedback, further YRS symposiums will be organised in future years (possibly as a day event). To find out more, email David Mclernon
