Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, University of Cambridge

Harding Professor of Statistics in Public Life, Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge

Professor Sir John Aston is the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Cambridge and is the Harding Professor of Statistics in Public Life.

John is an applied statistician with particular interest in statistical neuroimaging, official statistics and statistical linguistics. He has methodological interests in functional and object data analysis, time series and image analysis, and spatial-temporal statistics. John also leads research into the use of quantitative evidence in public policy making, works with those in public life to ensure the best methods are used, and aims to improve the use of statistics and other quantitative evidence in public policy debates.

In 2017-2020 John was Chief Scientific Adviser to the Home Office and Director-General for Science, Technology, Analysis, Research and Strategy. He was a founding director of the Alan Turing Institute. He is a member of the London Policing Board and the current President of the Royal Statistical Society, where he will serve as president during 2025-26. In 2024 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. Prior to joining the University of Cambridge, John held academic positions at the University of Warwick and at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. John was knighted in the 2021 Birthday Honours for services to statistics and public policymaking.