I have worked at Newcastle University in the Industrial Statistics Research Unit in various consulting, teaching and managerial positions and since 2012 am the Principal Statistician. I hold a visiting professorship in Ljubljana, Slovenia and was a visiting professor in Wroclaw, Poland.

ISRU is a self-financing business unit within the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics. ISRU provides a service to the commercial community dealing with any statistically related problems, helping clients to analyse their data, interpret the results and apply them to their world.

These consulting services include contributions to Newcastle University impact case studies which are so vital for University Research Excellence Frameworks.  I graduated from Newcastle University and before starting my more academic career worked for four years in HK including lecturing at Hong Kong University and consulting in Baring Securities in the financial sector.

Amongst other European funded projects, I co-ordinated Newcastle University’s pro-ENBIS thematic network which helped establish the European Network of Business and Industrial Statistics (ENBIS) as a bubbling hub of applied statistics and data science. ENBIS was founded in 2000; I was a founding member and from 2004-5 I was ENBIS president during which time I chaired the ENBIS international conference in Newcastle. More recently I was programme chair of ENBIS 12 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

I am a keen contributor to the Royal Statistical Society and have served on Council, as chair of the Quality Improvement Section and member of Professional Development Committee. In 2013 I co-chaired RSS 2013 in Newcastle, organised a joint seminar with Official Statistics Section which showcased new ideas and opportunities with open data and gave an invited talk on data mining in utilities to the RSS Business and Industry Section. I am a keen supporter of new communication techniques to spread knowledge and share information and ideas and enjoy teaching especially unlocking the world of quantitative methods to a wider audience.

I support statistical research to exploit the upsurge in data awareness and availability of massive collections of data in all sectors. I have co-authored a book due to be published by Wiley in March 2018 entitled “Monetising data: how to uplift your business”, which focuses on data analytics for small to medium enterprises (SMEs). My co-author, Andrea Ahlemeyer-Stubbe, and I wrote “A Practical Guide to Data Mining for Business and Industry”, published by Wiley in 2014, which focuses on sales and marketing applications. Both books aspire to motivating greater appreciation and utilisation of data in all sectors.

Shirley Coleman