Dr Amy Wilson

Dr Amy Wilson has had an inspirational career pathway that has used novel research methodologies across a number of industry sectors, to innovate and create lasting impact on the world.   

Amy Wilson is a lecturer in industrial mathematics with a background in interdisciplinary applied statistics for problems in industry and government. Applications she has worked on include the modelling of extremes for energy capacity adequacy studies (assessing the risk of shortfalls), uncertainty quantification for large-scale simulation models and decision-making under uncertainty in legal cases and energy policy. She is particularly interested in applications in statistics and the law and in energy systems. She won the 2022 Edinburgh Mathematical Society Impact Prize jointly with Chris Dent and Stan Zachary for the work on capacity adequacy studies with National Grid.  

Her PhD at the University of Edinburgh was on statistical modelling of traces of cocaine on banknotes. This was done jointly with a forensic science provider and was followed up by an EPSRC IAA project on applying the methodology in practice.  

The procedures and methods developed by Amy have supported the accreditation of a UK laboratory and have been cited in expert witness reports. More broadly in the School of Maths, Amy’s work formed part of a REF impact case study put together jointly with her colleague Professor Colin Aitken on methodology for interpreting forensic evidence. The methods in this case study were shown to have a widespread impact, being routinely used in forensic laboratories worldwide for casework and recommended in international guidelines for forensic scientists. Beneficiaries include both forensic scientists and the justice system. 

Evidence in court

More recently, Amy was the Principal Investigator for another EPSRC IAA-funded project on statistical modelling for the evaluation of gait analysis as evidence, and the team are working hard to get this adopted in a similar way to the banknotes project to achieve real-world impact. 

"If we have gait measurements taken from crime scene footage and gait measurements taken from a suspect, what is the probability of these measurements if the suspect is the individual in the crime scene footage, versus if the suspect is not the individual in the crime scene footage? I was able to develop a novel and bespoke Bayesian Network for modelling answers to this question. The EPSRC IAA funding allowed me to co-develop a proof-of-concept method with forensic scientists and we're now working with our partners to support its adoption." 

To assist the adoption of this research work, Amy has been working with the Royal Statistical Society where she is now the Chair of the Statistics and the Law Section (sector working group). This group aims to improve the understanding and use of statistics in the administration of justice, both civil and criminal. Activities have included developing training materials for legal professionals, running interdisciplinary workshops and commenting on policy issues at the interface of statistics, forensic science and the law. 

During her career Amy has had to overcome several challenges. Statistics and the law is a small field and so it can be difficult to start up research collaborations as an early career researcher. Access to networks like the Turing Institute and the Royal Statistical Society Section have helped with that, as has EPSRC IAA funding which has supported Amy in two collaborations with industry.