Applied & Interdisciplinary Statistics

Collaborative statistical modelling in food authenticity, actuarial risk, multivariate time series, and animal behaviour.

Alongside core methodological work, I collaborate across agricultural science, actuarial science, veterinary epidemiology, and financial/econometric time series. Recent projects include multivariate classification of stable isotope and trace-element profiles to verify grass-fed beef and dairy origin claims, quantifying the impact of polygenic risk scores on critical illness insurance, modelling dependent heteroskedastic time series, and prospective behavioural categorisation in animal science.

Project Publications

Moss, Alexandra L, Orlagh O’Reilly, Amy Rand, Amy R Holtby, Siobhan Mullan, Katharyn Mitchell, Emmeline W Hill, Michael Salter-Townshend, and Lisa M Katz. 2026. “Prospective Categorisation of Maternal Care Style in Thoroughbred Broodmares.” Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 107004.

Whyte, Hannah, Raquel Cama-Moncunill, Peter G Dunne, Aidan P Moloney, Frank McDermott, Matta Ebaid, Michael Salter-Townshend, Frank J Monahan, and Olaf Schmidt. 2026. “Discrimination of Beef Production System and Regional Geography by Multivariate Analysis of Stable Isotope Ratios (C, N, S, O, H).” Food Control 185: 112054.

Whyte, Hannah, Frank McDermott, David van Acken, Peter G Dunne, Aidan Moloney, Raquel Cama-Moncunill, Michael Salter-Townshend, Frank J Monahan, and Olaf Schmidt. 2025. “Discrimination of Beef from Predominantly Grass-Fed and Other Production Systems Using the Trace Elemental Profile of Muscle.” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 73 (50): 32169–82.

Conteddu, Kimberly, Holly M English, Andrew W Byrne, Bawan Amin, Laura L Griffin, Prabhleen Kaur, Virginia Morera-Pujol, et al. 2024. “A Scoping Review on Bovine Tuberculosis Highlights the Need for Novel Data Streams and Analytical Approaches to Curb Zoonotic Diseases.” Veterinary Research 55 (1): 64. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13567-024-01314-w.

Conteddu, Kimberly, Prabhleen Kaur, Michael Brown, Julian Fennessy, Stephanie Fennessy, Emma Hart, Bawan Amin, et al. 2024. “Random Subsamples of Animal Populations Can Reveal Intrinsic Differences in Sociality with Key Implications in Ecology, Conservation and Disease Transmission.” bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.11.07.622426.

O’Sullivan, Roisin, Raquel Cama-Moncunill, Michael Salter-Townshend, Olaf Schmidt, and Frank J Monahan. 2023. “Verifying Origin Claims on Dairy Products Using Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis and Random Forest Classification.” Food Chemistry: X 19: 100858.

Wang, Fangyijie, and Michael Salter-Townshend. 2023. “Novel Models for Multiple Dependent Heteroskedastic Time Series.” arXiv Preprint arXiv:2310.17760. https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.17760.

Zhao, Jinbo, Michael Salter-Townshend, and Adrian O’Hagan. 2023. “A Simulation Study for Multifactorial Genetic Disorders to Quantify the Impact of Polygenic Risk Scores on Critical Illness Insurance.” European Actuarial Journal 13 (2): 775–813. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13385-023-00345-5.

McMackin, Leo, and Michael Salter-Townshend. 2018. “Regression Tree Ensembles for Irish Property Valuation.”

Becker, Brett A, John Regan, Michael Salter-Townshend, and Kevin Casey. 2015. “Making a Case for an Irish Supercomputer List (Irish500).”