Professor Duncan Lee
- Professor of Statistics (Statistics)
telephone: 01413304047
email: Duncan.Lee@glasgow.ac.uk
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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6175-6800Research interests
Research Interests
My research interests are in developing statistical methods for use in epidemiology, focusing on disease mapping, and studies that investigate the effects of air pollution on human health. The aim in disease mapping is to quantify the spatial pattern in disease risk over a city or country, as well as determining whether there has been any increase or reduction in the risk over time. These spatio-temporal risk maps allow public health researchers to identify the areas at highest risk of disease, so that health resources can be targeted accordingly. The production of such risk maps requires flexible spatio-temporal statistical models to be developed, that can represent the changes in disease risk over space and through time. My second research interest is studies that estimate the health impact of air pollution exposure, both in the short and the long term. Both these themes are investigated using Bayesian methods, utilizing Markov chain monte carlo simulation.
Research Groups
Grants
Grants as PI.
- ESRC grant ‘Allowing for cliffs and slopes in the risk surface when modelling small-area data’, Oct 2010 - Sept 2012, £52,556.
- EPSRC grant ‘A rigorous statistical framework for estimating the long-term health effects of air pollution’, Jan 2013 - Dec 2015, £269,755.
- MRC grant entitled ‘A flexible class of Bayesian spatio-temporal models for cluster detection, trend estimation and forecasting of disease risk’, Feb 2015 - Jan 2018, £304, 000.
- EPSRC grant 'Linking air pollution and health in Scotland to inform on locations for a Low Emission Zone', July 2017, £14,962.
- TB Alliance grant entitled 'Mathematical modelling of MDR, pre XDR, and XDR burden of the TB population', £24,068.
Grants as CI.
- Environment Agency grant `'Spatiotemporal modelling of Nitrate and Phosphorus in River Catchments for England and Wales', 01/03/2009 - 31/10/2010 , £61,710.
- Carnegie scholarship for PhD study for Craig Anderson, 01/10/2011 - 28/02/2015, £63,696.
- NERC knowledge transfer grant 'Statistics, environmental management, policy and regulation: developing the evidence base', 01/08/2009 - 31/07/2012, £295,868.85.
- ESRC grant 'Applied Quantitative Methods Network: Phase II', 01/01/2013 - 30/12/2016 , £2,601,794
- NERC Postgraduate and Professional Skills Development Award, 26/09/2013, £73,000.
- ESRC grant entitled 'Urban Big Data Research Centre', 2014 - 2018, £6,003,547.
- NERC grant entitled 'Advanced statistics training', 2014 - 2015, £73,000.
- Carnegie scholarship for PhD study for Eilidh Jack, 01/10/2015 - 28/02/2019, £70,000.
- NERC grant entitled 'Advanced statistics training', 2015 - 2016, £70,000.
- Innovate UK grant entitled 'A new integrated decision-making tool for urban health and policy evaluation: ‘QCumber-envHealth’', October 2015 - September 2017, £456,398.
- EPSRC grant (as part of the SECURE network) entitled 'Feasibility testing of low-cost sensors to represent spatio-temporal variability of ambient ground-level NO2 and O3 concentrations', October to December 2015, £25,000.
- CI for a NERC funded CASE PhD studentship, 2016 - 2019, £60,000.
- EPSRC grant (as part of the SECURE network) entitled 'Improved approaches for mapping and modelling blanket peatland extent and depth', May to August 2016, £24,962.
- Scottish Executive Health Department grant entitled 'Multimorbidity in UK Biobank', December 2016, £22,029.
Supervision
Current research staff
Current PhD students
Eilidh Jack
Kamol Sanittham
Yoana Borisova
Xueqing Yin
Postgraduate opportunities
Mapping disease risk in space and time
Estimating the effects of air pollution on human health
Existing research staff
- Alastair Rushworth - January 2013 - May 2015, working on the EPSRC funded project 'A rigorous statistical framework for estimating the long-term health effects of air pollution'.
- Francesca Pannullo - June 2015 - December 2015, working on the EPSRC funded project 'A rigorous statistical framework for estimating the long-term health effects of air pollution'.
- Gary Napier - March 2015 - August 2018, working on the MRC funded project 'A flexible class of Bayesian spatio-temporal models for cluster detection, trend estimation and forecasting of disease risk'.
Existing PhD students
- Helen Powell - PhD Statistics - 'Statistical methods in air pollution and health studies', October 2008 until July 2012.
- Serdar Neslihanoglu - 'Financial time series modelling', March 2011 until June 2014, jointly with Prof McColl.
- Craig Anderson - PhD Statistics - 'Bayesian space-time modelling of disease risk', October 2011 until February 2015, jointly with Dr Dean.
- Guowen Huang - PhD Statistics - 'Space-time air pollution and health modelling', August 2013 until July 2016, jointly with Prof Scott.
- Francesca Pannullo - PhD Statistics - 'Space-time air pollution and health modelling', October 2013 until August 2017, jointly with Prof Leyland and Dr Waclawski.
Existing MSc (by research) students
- Abita Bhaskar - MSc Statistics - 'Environmental exposures and cardiovascular morbidity in Scotland', October 2007 until February 2009, jointly with Prof Scott.
- Neil Murphy - MSc Statistics - 'Modelling aids incidence in South Africa', October 2009 until September 2010, jointly with Prof McColl.
- Greg Halbert - MSc Statistics - 'Estimating the changing effects of air pollution on health in Scotland', October 2010 until September 2012.
- Katie Stewart - MSc Statistics - 'How much spatial autocorrelation is too much?', October 2013 until January 2015.
- Cillian Docherty - MSc Statistics - 'Environmental indicators', October 2015 until September 2017, jointly with Prof Scott.
Teaching
- S1Y Probability - first year course.
- 3H and 5M Biostatistics - third year and masters course.
- 4H and 5M Spatial statistics - fourth year and masters course.
- Final year undergraduate and masters projects.
Additional information
@DuncanPLee
Computer software
CARBayes - A package for the statistical software R to implement spatial generalised linear mixed models for areal unit data, with inference in a Bayesian setting using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation. The software is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) here.Over 83,000 downloads between 2012 and 2018.
CARBayesST - A package for the statistical software R to implement spatio-temporal generalised linear mixed models for areal unit data, with inference in a Bayesian setting using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation. The software is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) here. Over 23,000 downloads between 2014 and 2018.
Visiting Researchers
- Aritz Adin - Visiting PhD student from the Public University of Navarra, Spain, working on Space-time disease modelling for 3 months in the summer of 2016.
- Chawarat Rotejanaprasert -Visiting researcher from the Mahidol University, Thailand, working on Space-time disease modelling for 3 months in the summer of 2018.
Professional activities
- I am the conference chair for the biennial GEOMED conference, which will be held in Glasgow in August 2019. See www.geomed2019.org.uk.
- Associate editorships at Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Biometrical Journal, and Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology.
- Guest edited three special issues of Statistical Methods in Medical research and one special issue of Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology.
- Invited semimars at the universities of: Bath, Bristol, Edinburgh, Lancaster, Leeds, Medical University of South Carolina, Newcastle, Sheffield, Southampton, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
- Invited conference talks at: 7th meeting of the Classification and Data Analysis group of the Italian Statistical society - September 2009, Catania; 58th World Statistics Congress of the International Statistical Institute - September 2011, Dublin; Joint Statistical Meetings - August 2013, Montreal and August 2016, Chicago; GEOMED - September 2013, Sheffield and September 2015 Florence; ERCIM - December 2013, London; International Biometrics Conference - July 2014, Florence; Royal Statistical Society - September 2014, Sheffield; Migrants in the City - October 2015, Sheffield; Scottish Government Statistics day - December 2015, Edinburgh; TIES - July 2016, Edinburgh and July 2017, Bergamo; StEPhI project workshop - September 2016, Pescara.
- Organised conference sessions and meetings at Royal Statistical Society conferences in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2107, 2018; ISBA conference in 2014; TIES conference in 2016 and 2017; GEOMED conference in 2015 and 2017; workshops organised in conjunction with the Environmental Statistics Section of the RSS in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.
- External PhD examiner at the Universities of Bath; Lancaster; Leeds; Oxford; Queensland Technology; Southampton; Technology Sydney.
- ESRC Peer Review College - November 2012 to October 2019.
- Secretary of the environmental statistics section (ESS) of the Royal Statistical Society between 2013 and 2016.
Room 342, Mathematics and Statistics Building, Glasgow G12 8SQ,
