The Faculty of Mathematics has announced the winner of one of the University's oldest and most prestigious prizes.

The Adams Prize is awarded jointly each year by the Faculty of Mathematics and St John's College to a young (normally under 40 years of age), UK-based researcher involved in first class international research in the mathematical sciences.

This year's topic was statistics, and the prize has been awarded to Dr Paul Fearnhead of the Department of Mathematics & Statistics, Lancaster University.

Professor Timothy Pedley, Chairman of the Adams Prize adjudicators, said:

“Paul Fearnhead has made major contributions to several areas of computational statistics and population genetics.

“His methodological work in population genetics includes innovative methods for estimating recombination rates and new algorithms for exact sampling from genetic models.

“He has also provided practical, elegant and theoretically-supported solutions for challenging problems in particle filtering.”

The Adams Prize is named after the mathematician John Couch Adams and was endowed by members of St John's College. It is currently worth approximately £13,000.

The prize commemorates Adams' discovery of the planet Neptune, through calculation of the discrepancies in the orbit of Uranus.

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