James Grant's Avatar

James Grant

@jamesagrant.bsky.social

Researcher in Statistics and AI | Specialisms: Reinforcement Learning, Bandits Lecturer @ Lancaster University | he/him | πŸ³οΈβ€πŸŒˆπŸ΄σ §σ ’σ ³σ £σ ΄σ Ώ | views own Book nerd πŸ“š | Dog lover 🐢 | Inconsistent runner πŸƒ https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/grantj/

40 Followers  |  71 Following  |  10 Posts  |  Joined: 01.03.2025  |  1.7719

Latest posts by jamesagrant.bsky.social on Bluesky

Rocky coastline of Greek island

Rocky coastline of Greek island

Recharged after a much needed week of sun and rest β˜€οΈπŸ‡¬πŸ‡· Even managed to clear the email backlog in a morning. πŸ“€

09.07.2025 13:52 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
STEMMing the Leaky Pipeline: A β€œPride in Science” special - Lancaster University As a part of Pride month, the Research and Engagement Team in the Faculty of Science and Technology interviewed LGBTQ+ members of research and academic staff from a range of departments to get their i...

A great chat about all things LGBTQ+ & STEM is written up in this @lancasteruni.bsky.social blog - was really interesting to reflect on how LGBTQ+ identities have interacted with our careers, and the role of visibility and allyship in building inclusion further. www.lancaster.ac.uk/sci-tech/abo...

30.06.2025 10:57 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Gutted to miss this one due to holidays, but strongly recommend to those able to get to it in Edinburgh and looking forward to reading the book @kevinguyan.bsky.social πŸ³οΈβ€πŸŒˆ

23.06.2025 13:44 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Covariance Decomposition for Distance Based Species Tree Estimation In phylogenomics, species-tree methods must contend with two major sources of noise; stochastic gene-tree variation under the multispecies coalescent model (MSC) and finite-sequence substitutional noi...

New out on arXiv today: arxiv.org/abs/2506.16425

This paper on statistical properties of estimators in phylogenomics is the last from George's soon-to-be-submitted thesis. It was great to supervise as it was a wonderful example of the research being driven by George's curiosity and original ideas.

23.06.2025 13:42 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Post image Post image

Refuse to be invisible! πŸ³οΈβ€πŸŒˆπŸ³οΈβ€βš§οΈ

Now is the time to make our voices heard, sharing our experiences in the EHRC Consultation which affects LGBTQ+ people.

We've created a handy guide to help plan your response, get started now and share this post.

www.lgbt.foundation/EHRC

03.06.2025 17:42 β€” πŸ‘ 49    πŸ” 29    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 10

Come back to me when the AI can fold the laundry πŸ˜…

05.06.2025 10:15 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Are there more autistic people now? Why is the number of autism diagnoses changing? And what does it mean for autistic people?

This BBC article does a better than average job of reporting the difficulties in measuring trends conditions like autism with highly variable diagnosis rates - kudos!: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

03.05.2025 10:52 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Today is revision lecture day which means quadruple checking I go through the solutions to LAST year’s exam, not THIS year’s as I had a nightmare about last week πŸ˜‚

02.05.2025 08:57 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
A screengrab of the BBC website showing three stories from the past two days of men murdering women, and one from a week ago.

A screengrab of the BBC website showing three stories from the past two days of men murdering women, and one from a week ago.

I am so incredibly tired of this ongoing attack on trans people. Cis men are murdering women in plain sight. If gender-critical women turned their attention to dealing with men, women might be safe. I'm not worried about loos or changing rooms. I am worried about literally everything else.

16.04.2025 08:56 β€” πŸ‘ 234    πŸ” 82    πŸ’¬ 5    πŸ“Œ 1

The core trilma here remains the same - the govt needs to accept one of three things: high student migration, higher domestic student fees (or higher taxes to fund universities) or university bankruptcies. Those are the only options, given where we are. Pick one.

08.04.2025 07:58 β€” πŸ‘ 685    πŸ” 350    πŸ’¬ 37    πŸ“Œ 31

Today EPSRC has published an independent analysis of diversity data, by @royalstatsoc.bsky.social and input from the Alan Turing Institute.
The project investigates potential bias in the EPSRC peer review process using structured data analysis and textual analysis of reviewers’ comments and scores.

06.03.2025 11:13 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1

Outside work I'm a big fan of books, coffee, dogs, running, and general nerdy/queer fun stuff πŸ˜€

01.03.2025 10:51 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I'm a statistician by training and always interested in how data-driven models and systems can be explained clearly to the public.

I'm a small part of some great EDI initiatives at the Royal Statistical Society and at Lancaster and keen to share and learn from others' inclusion expertise here.

01.03.2025 10:51 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Hi Bluesky πŸ¦‹ πŸ‘‹

I'm hoping to (re)connect with the Stats, ML/AI, and EDI in STEM/Academia communities here, so here's a cringey bio

I'm a Lecturer (Assist Prof) at Lancaster Uni, with a background in reinforcement learning theory, and interests in fairness & reliability in human-AI decision-making.

01.03.2025 10:51 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

@jamesagrant is following 20 prominent accounts