Professor of Data Science, University of Manchester

Mark Elliot has worked at the University of Manchester since 1996, where he currently holds a chair in data science. His research is focused on the topics of data privacy and anonymisation. He founded the international recognised Confidentiality and Privacy Research Group (CAPRI) in 2002, and has run numerous research projects within the CAPRI remit. He leads the UK Anonymisation Network, is co-director of both the Administrative Data Research Network and the National Centre for Research methods. He is one of the key international researchers in the field of Statistical Disclosure and has an extensive portfolio of research grants and publications in the field.

Professor Elliot has extensive experience in collaboration with non-academic partners, particularly with national statistical agencies (e.g. Office for National Statistics, US Bureau of the Census, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Statistics Singapore) where he has been a key influence on disclosure control methodology used in censuses and surveys and where the SUDA software, he developed in collaboration with colleagues in Computer Science at Manchester, is currently employed.

Aside from Confidentiality and Privacy his research interests include Data Science Methodology and the Psychology and Sociology of Personal Relationships.

Some Recent Publications

Elliot, M.J., Mackey, E., O’Hara, K. M. and Tudor, C. (2016) The Anonymisation Decision Making Framework, UKAN publications.

Elliot, M.J., Mackey, E., O’Shea S., Tudor, C. and Spicer, K. (2016) ‘Open Data or End User License: A Penetration Test.’ Journal of Official Statistics.

Watt L. and Elliot, M.J. (2017, Accepted) ‘The Individualisation Paradox: Exploring age, period and cohort effects on attitudes towards sexual relationships’ Sociological Review

Watson S. and Elliot, M. J. (2016) ‘Entropy Balancing: A maximum-entropy reweighting scheme to adjust for convergence error’ Quality and Quantity 50(4); 1781-1797