Owen Thomas
science, fiction, everything in between
I am a researcher at the Oslo Centre for Biostatistcs and Epidemiology, where I work on s related to Bayesian inference, clinical research, and mental health epidemiology.
Outside of work, I read, write, perform music, watch films, and enjoy the outdoors.
This site exists for me to assemble public-facing online information about myself.
Owen Thomas
Originally from London, I studied Physics at undergraduate and Master's level. I changed to doctoral studies in Statistics, drawn to its general applicability and combination of interesting theory and grounding in observable data.
I moved to Oslo for a postdoc in 2017 and have been mostly based here ever since.
I have broad interests in the arts and humanities outside of the sciences, and am very interested in potential lateral intersections between them. I am chiefly active in literature, music and film, but am capable of becoming interested in more-or-less anything. Please take contact if you have a good idea and would like to collaborate.
Research
My present research interests include generalised Bayesian inference, psychometrics, mental health epidemiology and RCT methods. I have also worked on Bayesian nonparametrics, simulation-based inference, and broadly across clinical research. My present position at OCBE is divided 50:25:25 between my personal research, statistical advising, and RCT analysis with the OUH CTU.
Brief academic topic history:
- My doctoral work was mainly on method development for scalability and privacy for Gaussian Process models.
- My postdoc was mostly focussed on likelihood-free inference, with some extensions to prior elicitation and generalised Bayesian inference under misspecifiation.
- At Ahus I worked widely across clinical research, and developed a personal interest in psychometrics, prostate cancer, and health economics.
Recent Publications
- [Paper title]
- [Paper title]
Writing
I write about statistics, literature, history, and culture.
Recent essays
- [Essay title]
- [Essay title]
- [Essay title]
TODO — set your real Substack feed URL in SUBSTACK_FEED_URL near the bottom of this file (it's yourpublication.substack.com/feed). Once set, this list loads your most recent posts automatically and these placeholders disappear. If the fetch fails, these placeholders stay put as a fallback.
TODO — replace with your actual Substack URL.
Music
Choir
TODO — a couple of sentences: which choir, what kind of repertoire, how long you've sung with them.
[Choir description.]
Irish traditional music
[Instrument(s), sessions you play in, and any groups worth naming.]
Unquiet Grind
[A sentence or two on the band — what kind of music, who's in it, where people can hear it.]
Recordings
- [Track or release title]
Upcoming performances
- [Event name]
TODO — update this list by hand as shows are booked; remove past ones as they pass.
Statistorians
[One sentence on what the podcast is about, once it exists.]
TODO — until the first episode is out, this panel can just say so plainly. Once episodes exist, list them below, newest first, and add the platform links.
New episodes coming soon.
- [Episode title]
Curriculum Vitae
Employment
- Researcher, Oslo Centre for Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Oslo University Hospital, Norway
- Statistician, Health Services Research Unit (HØKH), Akershus University Hospital, Norway
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Oslo Centre for Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Oslo, Norway
Education
- Doctorate, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, UK
- Undergraduate/Master's in Physics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, UK
Contact
- Bluesky
- GitHub