Simon Tavaré of the University of Cambridge was elected as a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Simon Tavaré, former director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, has been elected as a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Tavaré is a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and Professor of Cancer Research in the Department of Oncology, at the University of Cambridge.
“I have worked for many years at the interface between the mathematical sciences and the biological and medical sciences,” Tavaré said of the research that won him the distinction. “This work has led to the development of methods for understanding modern molecular data in biomedicine.”
His research has included probabilistic and statistical aspects of coalescent theory in population genetics, likelihood-based methods for sequence variation data, evolutionary approaches to cancer, stem cell biology, approximate Bayesian computation for inference in complex stochastic processes, and statistical bioinformatics (particularly in the cancer field).
“I am delighted to have been elected as a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences,” Tavaré said. “It is a singular honour to be a member of so august a scientific society. But much more importantly, I hope this gives further recognition to the important role the mathematical disciplines can and do play in science more generally.”
Tavaré is a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, the American Mathematical Society, the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and the Society of Biology. He also served as president of the London Mathematical Society from 2015 to 2017.
Tavaré was among 21 foreign associates elected by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in May. The Academy elected 84 new members as well.