Statistics with industry: demonstrating impact

Note: this event is being organised by the Statistical Society meetup, so keep an eye on their page to confirm final details:
https://www.meetup.com/Statistical-Society-of-Australia-Victorian-Branch/events/259316065/

Statistics with industry: demonstrating impact

Companies are increasingly aware of the power of data and have read glowing success stories of transformation and added value through data science. They want to learn more and many are turning to Universities for support. Universities in the UK are keen to engage with business and industry because of the valuable research opportunities, and also because they need to show societal impact as part of their submissions to periodic Research Excellence Framework assessments.

The Industrial Statistics Research Unit was set up to help companies take advantage of statistical thinking to improve the way they function. Interaction with Universities is valuable to companies and in return provides the University with case studies for our teaching and evidence of our research impact. In this talk I will describe how we engage with companies through knowledge transfer partnerships and will outline a successful impact case study from REF 2014 that arose from our collaborative statistical research. The talk will be illustrated by case studies from our current partnerships with small to medium enterprises (SMEs).

Shirley Coleman, Technical Director of Industrial Statistics Research Unit, Newcastle University, UK

Shirley Coleman, PhD is Principal Statistician and Technical Director of the Industrial Statistics Research Unit, Newcastle University and a visiting scholar at the Faculty of Economics, Ljubljana University, Slovenia. She works on data analytics in SMEs and the energy sector and contributed a highly ranked impact case study to Newcastle University’s 2014 Research Excellence Framework. She is a past President of the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics (ENBIS), an elected member of the International Statistics Institute and a Chartered Statistician of the Royal Statistical Society, instrumental in mentoring early career statisticians and developing relations with business and industry. She is an active writer, reviewer and conference organiser interested in helping to address the challenges of embedding statistical thinking in the wider community.