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Biography

I am an Assistant Professor of Statistics in University College Dublin in the School of Mathematics and Statistics.

The icons under my photo are links to some online accounts I use.

My research spans statistical genetics, network analysis, palaeoclimate reconstruction, and sentiment analysis. See my publications below for more information or browse by topic by clicking projects in the navigation bar above.

Interests

Statistical Genetics
Network Analysis
Climate Reconstruction
Computational Statistics
Bayesian Statistics

Education

PhD in Statistics, 2009
Trinity College Dublin
MSc in High Performance Computing, 2004
Trinity College Dublin
BA Mod Computational Physics, 2003
Trinity College Dublin

People

Current PhD Students:

Prabhleen Kaur (cosupervised by Simone Ciuti).
- “Social Network Analysis of Animal Social Networks: robustness and methods.”
- Funded by Foundations of Data Science, SFI Centre for Research Training
Kseniia Maksimova (cosupervised by Emmeline Hill).
- “Novel population genomics approaches for trait mapping using the Thoroughbred horse model.”
- Funded by Genomics Data Science, SFI Centre for Research Training
Kim Conteddu (primary supervisor Simone Ciuti).
- “Modelling the effect of human pressures on wildlife social-networks to improve our understanding of multispecies disease transmission.”
- Funded by Foundations of Data Science, SFI Centre for Research Training

Former PhD Students:

Dr. Jinbo Zhao (cosupervised by Adrian O’Hagan).
- “Statistical Genetics Models with Actuarial Applications.”
- Funded by Insight
- Now a postdoc with Systems Biology Ireland.
Dr. Catherine Mahoney (primary supervisor Denis Shields).
- “Discovering genomic regions enriched for de novo recombination events.”
- Funded by IRC Enterprise, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
- Now a Pharmacoepidemiology Senior Principal at Eli Lilly and Company.
James Ward (primary supervisor David MacHugh).
- “High resolution functional population genomics of modern, historical and ancient cattle (Bos spp.).”
- Funded by Genomics Data Science, SFI Centre for Research Training
Dr. Chiara Cotroneo (primary supervisor Denis Shields).
- “Identification of chromosomal clusters of protein domain coding regions in Bacteria and Archaea.”
- Funded by the Wellcome Trust.
- Now a Senior Data Scientist at Nord Security.

MSc Students Supervision:

M.Sc. in Statistics, University College Dublin
M.Sc. in Data and Computational Science, University College Dublin
M.Sc. in Actuarial Science, University College Dublin
M.Sc. in Applied Statistics, University of Oxford

Projects

Statistical Genetics

Statistical Analysis of genetics data, mostly focussing on Population Genetics.

Recent Publications

Prabhleen Kaur, Simone Ciuti, Federico Ossi, Francesca Cagnacci, Nicolas Morellet, Anne Loison, Kamal Atmeh, Philip McLoughlin, Adele K. Reinking, Jeffrey L. Beck, Anna C. Ortega, Matthew Kauffman, Mark Boyce, Michael Salter-Townshend (2024).A protocol for assessing bias and robustness of social network metrics using GPS based radio-telemetry data. Movement Ecology.

Project DOI

Kimberly Conteddu, Holly M. English, Andrew W. Byrne, Bawan Amin, Laura L. Griffin, Prabhleen Kaur, Virginia Morera-Pujol, Kilian J. Murphy, Michael Salter-Townshend, Adam Francis Smith, Simone Ciuti (2024).A scoping review on bovine tuberculosis highlights the need for novel data streams and analytical approaches to curb zoonotic diseases. Veterinary Research.

Project DOI preprint

James A Ward, Said I Ng'ang'a, Imtiaz AS Randhawa, Gillian P McHugo, John F O'Grady, Julio M Flórez, John A Browne, Ana M Pérez O’Brien, Antonio J Landaeta-Hernández, José F Garcia, Tad S Sonstegard, Laurent AF Frantz, Michael Salter-Townshend, David E MacHugh (2024).Genomic insights into the population history and adaptive traits of Latin American Criollo cattle. Royal Society Open Science.

Project DOI

Software

Software I have written / contributed to for general distribution

MOSAIC Tool for modelling multiway admixture using dense genotype data.
aniSNA Obtain network structures from animal GPS telemetry observations and statistically analyse them to assess their adequacy for social network analysis. Methods include pre-network data permutations, bootstrapping techniques to obtain confidence intervals for global and node-level network metrics, and correlation and regression analysis of the local network metrics.
VBLPCM Fit and simulate latent position and cluster models for network data, using a fast Variational Bayes approximation.
egoTERGM Estimation of ego-temporal exponential random graph models.
Review of Statistical Network Analysis: Models, Algorithms and SoftwareR scripts used to run the examples in the supplementary document to the paper “Review of Statistical Network Analysis: Models, Algorithms and Software” (Statistical Analysis and Data Mining, 2012). The entire directory (input files and R scripts) is archived in a single file.

Teaching

I am currently lecturing the following courses in UCD:

STAT30280 Inference for Data Analytics
STAT40400 Monte Carlo Inference
STAT40820 Monte Carlo (online)

Courses I previously lectured:

Time Series Analysis
Time Series Analysis Actuarial App
Time Series (Online)
Bayesian Analysis (level 2 undergraduate module)
Bayesian Analysis (level 4 masters module)
Bayesian Analysis (Online)
Statistics Using R for Computational Biologists, University College Dublin (2011, 2012, 2013).
Case Studies in Simulation Science, University College Dublin (2013).
Statistics and Mathematics in Computational Biology, University College Dublin (2009, 2010).
Transferable Skills: Statistics I and II (Ph.D. level), University College Dublin (2010, 2011).
Advanced Quantitative Research Methods module, School of Nursing, Trinity College Dublin (2007).
Introduction to Management Science, Dept. of Statistics, Trinity College Dublin (2007).

Courses I previously tutored:

Visiting Students’ Tutor in Statistics, Mansfield College, University of Oxford (2015, 2016).
Stochastic Models in Mathematical Genetics, University of Oxford (2014, 2015).
Introduction to Unix, School of Mathematics, Trinity College Dublin (2005-2006).
Numerical Computing, School of Mathematics, Trinity College Dublin (2005-2007).

Activities

Professional Activities:

Head of Graduate Teaching and Learning, School of Mathematics and Statistics, UCD (2022-).
Director of Online Programmes School of Mathematics and Statistics, UCD (2017-).
Committee Irish Society of Human Genetics (2018-).
Statistician Animal Research Ethics Committee, UCD (2017-).
Named Supervisor SFI Centre for Research Training in Foundations of Data Science
Named Supervisor SFI Centre for Research Training in Genomics Data Science
Education Officer Irish Statistical Association (2017-2019).
Organising Committee Conference of Applied Statistics Ireland (2017).

Refereeing:

Statistical Genetics:

Statistics and Machine Learning:

Other:

Assorted Other activities:

Organiser of DPhil / postdoc seminar series, Dept. of Statistics, University of Oxford (2013-2016).
Green Impact committee, Dept. of Statistics, University of Oxford (2013-2016).
Interview board for hiring to CeADAR (Centre for Applied Data Analytics Research) (2013).
Exam marking for Mathematics, University of Oxford (2015, 2016).
Facilitator of academic taster sessions and application conferences for Mansfield College (2015).
Maintenance Committee Irish Supercomputer List (2013-2018).

Contact

michael.salter-townshend@ucd.ie
+353 1 716 2487
Science Centre East, UCD, Dublin,
DM Me