Peter Donnelly

Peter Donnelly (born 15 May 1959), FRS is an Australian mathematician and Professor of Statistical Science at the University of Oxford. He is a specialist in applied probability and has made important mathematical contributions to coalescent theory.

His research group at Oxford has an international reputation for the development of statistial methodology to analyse genetic data. He is a fellow of St Anne's College and, with Frances Ashcroft and Kay Davies is a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function.

He was educated at the University of Queensland and Balliol College, Oxford. When elected to a chair at Queen Mary College, London in 1988 he was only 29 [ [http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/people/academic_staff/peter_donnelly/cv] CV of Peter Donnelly] - Born 15 May 1959. ] and possibly the youngest Professor in Britain. He held a chair at the University of Chicago (94-96) and was head of the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford from 1996 to 2001. Since 2007, he has been Director, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics,(WTCHG) in Oxford where he is currently based.

Many leading statistical geneticists worked with Donnelly as young researchers including David Balding, Carsten Wiuf, Matthew Stephens and Jonathan Pritchard.

One area in which he has a leading reputation is in the interpretation of DNA evidence. He has acted as an expert witness on forensic science in criminal trials.

He is noted for his collaborative work with biologists. He has been heavily involved in a number of large scale projects, such as the International HapMap Project and the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, a genome-wide association study.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006 and also elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in June 2008.

See also R v Adams

References

External links

* [http://ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=p_donnelly Video] of Peter Donnelly lecture about mistakes in interpreting statistics and its impact on criminal trials. Talk given at the TED Conference July 2005 in Oxford, UK. (23 mins)