About us
Building 39 on the Highfield Campus
Home to S3RI's research staff
Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute, known as S3RI, is a school-level University Research Unit which is a centre for research on core statistical methodology for generic problems and substantive applications, particularly in the social sciences, engineering, health and medicine. S3RI also undertakes and co-ordinates collaborative and cross-disciplinary research, across the University, nationally and internationally, including projects with government bodies and industry. S3RI has a strong international visitor programme and long-term visiting professorships.
In RAE2008, S3RI research formed part of the submissions to Statistics and Operational Research (UOA 22) and to Sociology and Social Policy (UOA 40A). Both UOAs were top ten on grade point average and in the top two for power.
S3RI involves more than 50 academic, research and support staff and makes up one of the largest groups of statisticians in UK universities. Its members are mainly located in Building 58 (levels 2 and 3), the adjoining Building 54 (level 9) and the adjacent Building 39 on the Highfield Campus, with some members in the School of Medicine on the Southampton General Hospital site.
S3RI core and shared staff are actively involved in several University centres including the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM), the EPSRC National Centre for Advanced Tribology (nCATS), the ESRC Centre for Population Change, the ESRC Third Sector Centre, and the MacMillan Research Unit.
S3RI was established by the University in August 2003 to take forward the University’s excellent international reputation for research in the statistical sciences and their application to cutting edge research problems, and with University strategic underwriting of £370K (ended August 06). S3RI is now funded through its research and enterprise activities.
The research of S3RI is organised into the following five programmes plus PhD study:
- Survey Methods:statistical methods for surveys and censuses of social, economic and environmental populations, including sampling and estimation, measurement methods and imputation of missing data.
- Design and Analysis of Experiments: the development of efficient methods of planning experiments in science and industry and of drawing conclusions from the resulting data.
- Statistical Modelling and Computation: statistical methods for the analysis of studies in science and the social sciences, including methods for the analysis of data with complex structure.
- Policy and Evaluation: the use of statistical methods for the evaluation of national and international policies or programmes and the analysis of quantitative data relevant to policy, including methodology and substantive applications.
- Biostatistics: the application of statistical methods to the design and analysis of clinical trials and community and public health programmes.