Rate My Professor Anthony Lee

Professor Anthony Lee holds the Heilbronn Chair in Data Science within the School of Mathematics at the University of Bristol, a position he has occupied since 2020. He earned his BSc in Computer Science in 2006 and MSc in Computer Science in 2008 from the University of British Columbia, receiving the Academic Award of Excellence for his undergraduate degree and an NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship for his master's studies. He completed his DPhil in Statistics in 2011 at the University of Oxford, funded by the Clarendon Scholarship and Oxford-Man Institute Scholarship. Lee's professional career commenced as a CRiSM Research Fellow at the University of Warwick from 2011 to 2013, followed by an Assistant Professorship there until 2017. In 2017, he joined the University of Bristol as a Lecturer in Statistical Science, advancing through Senior Lecturer from 2018 to 2019 and Associate Professor (Reader) in Statistical Science from 2019 to 2020 to his current chair. He also held a Turing Fellowship at the Alan Turing Institute from 2016 to 2017 and served as Programme Director for Data Science at Scale at the institute from 2016 to 2022.

Anthony Lee's research centers on computational statistics, including Bayesian inference, Monte Carlo methodology, parallel and distributed algorithms, and scalable data analysis. His contributions cover probabilistic AI, Markov chains, Poisson equation solutions, weak Poincaré inequalities, and applications such as probabilistic volcanic ash hazard forecasts. Select publications include "Solving the Poisson equation using coupled Markov chains" with Jacob, Douc, and Vats in Annals of Statistics (2026), "Weak Poincaré Inequalities for Markov chains: theory and applications" with Andrieu, Power, and Wang in Annals of Applied Probability (2026), and "Incorporating Eruption Source Parameter and Meteorological Variability in the Generation of Probabilistic Volcanic Ash Hazard Forecasts" with Williams and colleagues in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (2025). Lee serves as Associate Editor for Bernoulli since 2023, Journal of Machine Learning Research since 2020, Foundations of Data Science since 2019, and previously for Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics from 2016 to 2024 and Statistics and Computing from 2015 to 2023. Within the University of Bristol, he directs the Statistical Computing 1 unit for the Compass Centre for Doctoral Training.