Oliver Stoner

I am a newly appointed Lecturer in Statistics. Prior to joining, I was a Research Fellow for 2 years at the University of Exeter, where I also obtained my PhD in 2019. My thesis is entitled Bayesian Hierarchical Modelling Frameworks for Flawed Data in Environment and Health. I am always motivated to advance statistical modelling within other disciplines and I'm currently contributing to projects spanning epidemiology, ecology, environmental hazards, and clinical sciences.

One of the main projects I am leading is an impact-oriented collaboration with the World Health Organization.

Around 2.6 billion people mainly use polluting fuels for cooking, hampering their socio-economic prospects and exposing them to dangerous levels of household air pollution, attributed by the World Health Organization to 3.8 million deaths per year in 2016. I have worked with the WHO to develop a bespoke Bayesian hierarchical model for estimating the populations using 6 different fuels for cooking, called the Global Household Energy Model. Estimates from GHEM serve as the primary basis for tracking access to clean cooking as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and are a key input to WHO burden of disease calculations for household air pollution.

Our new paper presenting these estimates in all their glory has been published in Nature Communications. I have also contributed as a named author to the 2020 and 2021 editions of Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report.