Innovative local SME Maximum Information hosts multiple COMPASS PhD student internships

COMPASS, the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Computational Statistics and Data Science, PhD student Ben Griffiths wanted to gain experience of applying his technical skills to real-world problems during his PhD. His supervisor, Dr Matteo Fasiolo, put him in touch with Maximum Information, an innovative start up founded in 2020, that works in the area of natural catastrophe risk modelling, and were interested in harnessing statistical expertise.

Image: A hurricane - one of several natural phenomenon modelled by the interns at Maximum Information.

Ben took up a 3-month paid internship in between the 3^rd and 4^th years of his PhD, visiting MaxInfo’s main office in London every fortnight. He spent the first month of his internship learning about the context of the modelling, including what is involved in forecasting earthquakes and hurricanes. His statistics background brought complementary skills to the team, who had expertise in insurance and catastrophe modelling.

During his internship, Ben implemented statistics-based testing in MagniPhi, MaxInfo’s catastrophe model evaluation app, carrying out the software development in R. Following the success of the internship, Ben has recently joined their Bristol team as a statistical modeller.

‘The internship provided a change of scene from my PhD, and I returned to my thesis with fresh ideas. It also helped me reconsider how to approach challenging problems. MaxInfo have very high standards of programming, and I gained valuable experience in code sharing, formatting, and documenting to an industry-level quality. In terms of soft skills, I got more used to business networking, and have become more confident. I enjoyed the 3 months so much that I applied for a full time position at MaxInfo, which I will start after completing my PhD. The internship was instrumental in securing this position.’ Ben Griffiths, COMPASS PhD student, University of Bristol.

     

Images: Ben Griffiths and Xinyue Guan

Following the success of the first internship, MaxInfo has continued to work with the School of Mathematics and offer paid internships In 2025, another of Matteo’s students, Xinyue Guan joined the company for a 6 month placement. Xinyue paused her PhD at the start of her 3^rd year to work for MaxInfo, predominantly based in their Bristol office, commuting to MaxInfo’s London headquarters for 2 days every month.

Xinyue spent the first half of her internship working on modelling the intensity of tropical cyclones (known in other regions as hurricanes or typhoons). Typically forecasts tend to underestimate (downward bias) the intensity of cyclones, Xinyue compared different methods to correct this bias. Her work formed part of an Innovate UK funded project on building global resilience to cyclone impacts and gave her the opportunity to collaborate with experts from the London School of Economics, University of Reading, and industry practitioners such as Aon UK. Her methods have been integrated within the platform to correct wind intensity forecasts. The second half of her internship explored methods for resampling tropical cyclone events with multiple landfalls, preserving the original event IDs rather than decomposing each event into separate sub-events. 

‘My internship gave me my first taste of working in industry. It was a really positive few months and I particularly enjoyed working on a project with huge societal impact, which should also result in a joint publication. I gained hands-on experience of communicating technical results with different audiences, as well as team-based commercial software development. I had never used GitHub before! MaxInfo really care about, and value, academic knowledge, and they made me very welcome. I have 18 months left of my PhD, and I now know I’d like to work in industry afterwards.’  Xinyue Guan, COMPASS PhD student, University of Bristol.

Dr Valentina Noacco, MaxInfo’s Chief Uncertainty Officer, echoes Xinyue’s view of the value that the company places on academic expertise. As an Honorary Research Fellow in the University’s School of Civil, Aerospace and Design Engineering, she understands the impact that PhD researchers can have within industry. Equally, she recognises the valuable insights, experience and opportunities that industrial partners can bring back into academia, creating a mutually beneficial relationship that strengthens both research and practice.

‘At Maximum Information, we work on highly technical challenges where close collaboration with academia is essential. COMPASS internships give us access to researchers who bring fresh perspectives, deep statistical expertise and the latest academic thinking into our product development. Ben and Xin both made meaningful contributions to our modelling capabilities, while strengthening links between research and industry.’ Dr Valentina Noacco, Chief Uncertainty Officer, Maximum Information.