Alison Mary Etheridge One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 1964) is Professor of
Probability
Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1, where, roughly speakin ...
and Head of the Department of Statistics, University of Oxford. Etheridge is a
fellow
A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context.
In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements.
Within the context of higher education ...
Smestow School
Smestow Academy (formerly Smestow School), also known as simply Smestow (pronounced "smest-oh") is a coeducational secondary school and sixth form located in the Castlecroft area of Wolverhampton, England.
History
The school was founded in 196 ...
and the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
where she was awarded a Master of Arts degree followed by a Doctor of Philosophy in 1989 for research supervised by David Albert Edwards.
Career and research
Following her PhD, Etheridge held research fellowships in Oxford and Cambridge and positions at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, The
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...
, and
Queen Mary University of London
, mottoeng = With united powers
, established = 1785 – The London Hospital Medical College1843 – St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College1882 – Westfield College1887 – East London College/Queen Mary College
, type = Public researc ...
before returning to Oxford in 1997.
Over the course of her career, her interests have ranged from abstract mathematical problems to concrete applications as reflected in her four books which range from a research monograph on mathematical objects called superprocesses to an exploration (co-authored with Mark H. A. Davis) of the percolation of ideas from the groundbreaking thesis of
Louis Bachelier
Louis Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Bachelier (; 11 March 1870 – 28 April 1946) was a French mathematician at the turn of the 20th century. He is credited with being the first person to model the stochastic process now called Brownian motion, as part ...
in 1900 to modern mathematical finance.
Much of her recent research is concerned with mathematical models of population genetics, where she has been particularly involved in efforts to understand the effects of spatial structure of populations on their patterns of genetic variation.
Etheridge has made significant contributions in the theory and applications of probability and in the links between them. Her particular areas of research have been in measure-valued processes (especially superprocesses and their generalisations); in theoretical
population genetics
Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and between populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as Adaptation (biology), adaptation, ...
; and in mathematical ecology. A recent focus has been on the genetics of spatially extended populations, where she has exploited and developed inextricable links with infinite-dimensional stochastic analysis. Her resolution of the so-called ' pain in the torus' is typical of her work in that it draws on ideas from diverse areas, from measure-valued processes to image analysis. The result is a flexible framework for modelling biological populations which, for the first time, combines ecology and
genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...
in a tractable way, while introducing a novel and mathematically interesting class of stochastic processes. The breadth of her contributions is further illustrated by the topics of her four books, which range from the history of
financial mathematics
Mathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance and financial mathematics, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with mathematical modeling of financial markets.
In general, there exist two separate branches of finance that require ...
to mathematical modelling in population genetics.
She is head of the University of Oxford's Department of Statistics, in a three-year post that runs until August 2022. She chairs the Mathematical Sciences sub-panel of the 2021
Research Excellence Framework
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a research impact evaluation of British higher education institutions. It is the successor to the Research Assessment Exercise and it was first used in 2014 to assess the period 2008–2013. REF is under ...
Institute of Mathematical Statistics
The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts o ...
Doctor of Science
Doctor of Science ( la, links=no, Scientiae Doctor), usually abbreviated Sc.D., D.Sc., S.D., or D.S., is an academic research degree awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. In some countries, "Doctor of Science" is the degree used f ...
degree in 2018/19. She has served on the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)'s Strategic Advisory Network and its Mathematical Sciences Strategic Advisory Team. She was appointed to the Council of the EPSRC in 2018.
She is a Trustee of the Royal Society and a member of its governing council. In September 2021 she became the chair of the
Council for the Mathematical Sciences
The Council for the Mathematical Sciences (CMS) is an organisation that represents all types of British mathematicians at a national level. It is not a professional institution, but a collaboration of them.
History
It was established in 2001 by ...
.
She was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
in 2023.
In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.http://www.nasonline.org/news-and-multimedia/news/2023-nas-election.html