FOUR million pounds is to be pumped into developing a national centre of excellence for statistics at Lancaster Uni-versity.

A state-of-the-art teaching block costing £2 million will be built and £500,000 a year for five years will be injected into the centre by the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

Statistics research at Lancaster, where recent projects include analysing causes of childhood diabetes, mapping disease in developing countries and model-ling extreme sea waves, is internationally recognised as among the best in the world.

The post-graduate centre is part of a £300 million programme of national centres for excellence in teaching and Learning.

Professor Amanda Chetwynd, director of the centre at Lanc-aster, says: " We are delighted to have the post-graduate training provided by Lancaster recog-nised.

She adds: "The group already has a reputation for world class statistical research, working with a range of professionals, and this funding will allow us to develop a substantial training programme."

Post-graduate student Sarah Barry, an MSc student now working as a research associate in Baltimore, USA, says: "The Statistics Department provides a superb atmosphere for work and I very much enjoyed doing my MSc there. The lecturers are very approachable and highly knowledgeable in their subject areas."