Kirsty HassallView profile
Assistant Professor
Kirsty Hassall is an Assistant Professor in Applied Statistics at the Department of Statistics, University of Warwick, having joined the department in 2024. She has previously worked for nearly 10 years as an applied statistician in the agri-environment sector, bringing extensive practical experience to her academic role. Dr. Hassall holds a PhD in "The temporal and spatial analysis of single cell gene expression" from the University of Warwick (2015). She is a Chartered Statistician with the Royal Statistical Society (2019) and has served as a committee member (2017-2021) and currently as Secretary (2021-present) of the British and Irish Region of the International Biometric Society (IBS-BIR). Her research focuses on developing robust hybrid models that combine empirical, mechanistic, and stochastic elements. With expertise spanning Bayesian networks, spatially coherent clustering techniques, and farm typology development, Dr. Hassall applies statistical methods to solve complex problems in agricultural and environmental science. Her work bridges traditional statistical consultancy (mixed models, multivariate statistics, experimental design) with methodological developments for real-world applications. Analysis of Dr. Hassall's recent publications reveals a strong interdisciplinary focus at the intersection of statistics, agriculture, and environmental science. Her work demonstrates consistent application of advanced statistical techniques to address pressing challenges in food security, sustainable agriculture, and environmental management. Key trends include the development of Bayesian Belief Networks for soil quality assessment, spatial modeling for crop production estimation, and statistical approaches to address gender dimensions in agricultural research. Chartered Statistician (Royal Statistical Society, 2019) Dr. Hassall is actively involved in research supervision and teaching, currently offering the ST344: Professional Data Science course. She has secured funding for PhD research, including a fully funded EPSRC scholarship project titled "Unravelling the sound underground: Detecting and estimating earthworm abundance using low-frequency vibrations." She also organizes the "Statistical Challenges in the Agri-Environmental Sector" workshop at the University of Warwick. Through her extensive publication record and active participation in professional societies, Dr. Hassall has established herself as a researcher who effectively bridges statistical methodology with practical applications in the agri-environmental sector. Her collaborative approach is evident in her numerous multi-institutional research projects across the UK, Africa, and Europe.









