STOR-i were delighted to host their Annual Conference on Thursday 9^th and Friday 10^th January 2025, bringing together a programme of talks from experts in Statistics and Operational Research as well as STOR-i Alumni.

This year, the conference was held in the LICA building on Lancaster University’s campus and hosted over 100 attendees, including internal STOR-i students and staff, industrial partners, visiting PhD students, and our external advisors. This gave plenty of chance for questions, discussions, and networking opportunities.

The conference's external speakers were: Dries Goosens, Ghent University; Maria Paola Scaparra, University of Kent, Dootika Vats, IIT Kampur; Belen Martin-Barragan, University of Edinburgh; Manuel Lopez Ibanez, University of Manchester; Eleni Matechou, University of Kent; Francesca Panero, Sapienza University; as well as STOR-i Alumni, Jamie-Leigh Chapman, Very Group; and Paul Sharkey, Datasparq.

The following members of STOR-i also gave talks: Connie Trojan, Robert Lambert, Danielle Notice, Kes Ward, and Edward Mellor.

Thursday evening saw the STOR-i PhD students display a poster they had created, explaining their research. The poster session was given a competitive element for first and second prize, with the winner being Theo Crookes, and second place going to Wanchen Yue. The judges, our speakers Dootika Vats and Francesca Panero, said that all the posters were of high quality and that the students did a great job at presenting their work.

The two-day conference ended on Friday lunchtime, giving attendees a final chance to network. Our speaker Belen Martin-Barragan said of the conference: “It was lovely being there and meeting the great community you have around the CDT”.

The STOR-i team are delighted to continue our tradition of annual conferences, and look forward to continuing with this in January 2026. Keep an eye on our website for the details of the next one.