Introduce Yourself

2022-2023 saw a number of new faces joining the department staff. Some are featured below …

Alessandra Cipriani (Lecturer)

I joined the department as a lecturer in February 2022 coming from TU Delft, where I was assistant professor.

I did my PhD in Zurich, and after completing it I joined the Weierstrass Institute in Berlin as a postdoc for three years, and then the University of Bath for one year before moving to the Netherlands.

My research focuses on random interfaces, particularly those that are used in statistical mechanics and physics, like the Gaussian free field and the membrane model.

Brieuc Lehmann (Lecturer)

I joined the department as a Lecturer back in January 2022. Before that, I was a postdoc at the University of Oxford working with Prof Chris Holmes and Prof Gil McVean in a joint position between the Big Data Institute and the Department of Statistics.

My research interests lie predominantly in Bayesian statistics, especially for biomedical applications. I’m interested in using statistics to better understand, and ultimately reduce, health inequalities. I’m one of the co-organisers of the Data Science for Health Equity community (https://www.dsxhe.com) which aims to bring together similarly-minded folk.

Outside of work, I love running - I am particularly obsessed with parkrun.

Karla Diaz Ordaz (Associate Professor)

I joined the department as Principal Research Fellow (Associate Professor) in October 2022, funded by a Royal Society-Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Dale Fellowship.

Before joining the department, I spent 10 years working at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, just two blocks down the road from UCL Stats!

My main research interests are in causal inference. I am especially interested in developing methods that allow the use of machine learning estimation for causal effects. Currently, I am working on treatment effect heterogeneity, counterfactual prediction and fairness.