Nicola G. "Nicky" Best is a

statistician A statistician is a person who works with Theory, theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private sector, private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, a ...

known for her work on the

deviance information criterion The deviance information criterion (DIC) is a hierarchical modeling generalization of the Akaike information criterion (AIC). It is particularly useful in Bayesian model selection problems where the posterior distributions of the models have been ...

Bayesian inference Bayesian inference ( or ) is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to calculate a probability of a hypothesis, given prior evidence, and update it as more information becomes available. Fundamentally, Bayesian infer ...

and as a developer of

Bayesian inference using Gibbs sampling Bayesian inference using Gibbs sampling (BUGS) is a statistical software for performing Bayesian inference using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. It was developed by David Spiegelhalter at the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit i ...

. She is a former professor of

biostatistics Biostatistics (also known as biometry) is a branch of statistics that applies statistical methods to a wide range of topics in biology. It encompasses the design of biological experiments, the collection and analysis of data from those experimen ...

and

epidemiology Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and Risk factor (epidemiology), determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population, and application of this knowledge to prevent dise ...

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

and is currently a biostatistician for

GlaxoSmithKline GSK plc (an acronym from its former name GlaxoSmithKline plc) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Pharmaceutics, pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with headquarters in London. It was established in 2000 by a Mergers an ...

Education and career

Best earned a master's degree in medical statistics from the

University of Leicester The University of Leicester ( ) is a public university, public research university based in Leicester, England. The main campus is south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park, Leicester, Victoria Park. The university's predecessor, Univ ...

in 1990 and then a PhD in biostatistics from the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

, supervised by

David Spiegelhalter Sir David John Spiegelhalter (born 16 August 1953) is a British statistician and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. From 2007 to 2018 he was Winton Professorship of the Public Understanding of Risk, Winton Professor of the Public Under ...

. She joined the Imperial College faculty in 1996. She moved from Imperial to

in 2014. She was editor-in-chief of the ''

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society The ''Journal of the Royal Statistical Society'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of statistics. It comprises three series and is published by Oxford University Press for the Royal Statistical Society. History The Statistical Society of ...

, Series A (Statistics in Society)'', from 2001 to 2004.

Recognition

Best won the

Guy Medal The Guy Medals are awarded by the Royal Statistical Society in three categories; Gold, Silver and Bronze. The Silver and Bronze medals are awarded annually. The Gold Medal was awarded every three years between 1987 and 2011, but is awarded bienni ...

in Bronze of the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

in 2004. In 2018, she won the Bradford Hill Medal of the Royal Statistical Society "for her exquisite expositions of Bayesian methods through BUGS software, workshops, lectures, prior elicitations, textbooks and peer-review publications; and for substantive applications ranging from clinical trials and cost-effectiveness to epidemiology and, most recently, the optimization of pharmaceutical research programmes".

Selected publications

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Best, Nicky Year of birth missing (living people) Living people British statisticians British women statisticians Alumni of the University of Leicester Alumni of the University of Cambridge Academics of Imperial College London Academic journal editors