Norah Almasoud

Hi everyone, I am Norah, a statistician! 🙂  

I hold a BSc degree in Statistics from King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia and an MSc degree in applied statistics from the well-known university in USA “Texas A&M University”. Currently, I am doing my postgraduate research in biostatistics at Leeds. There are many reasons that attract my attention for doing the PhD at the University of Leeds.  

Here are some:  

• The School of Mathematics has many big names and senior scholars in the field, one may check their google scholar profiles and see their enormous contributions to the science community and the world.  
• The Statistics department has a very interesting program called “Academy for PhD Training in Statistics (APTS)” where you will be fully funded to go to different universities four times in your first or second year of the program. Each time you go for a week to attend courses that are relevant to the research preparation and background education of all statistics and probability PhD students in the UK. The great thing about it, it is a huge opportunity for any new PhD researchers to expand their knowledge and enhance their communication network. Some of the courses can be held in “Oxford, Durham, Cambridge, Warwick, ..etc”.  

•  I like the diversity in the student's community.  

Therefore, the University of Leeds is one of the most prestigious universities in the UK, and for good reasons. With world-class facilities and teaching, as well as a strong focus on research. It is an excellent choice for any student looking to further their education.  

A few reasons made me decide to live in Leeds that it is a student-friendly city, it has nightlife, shopping malls and tons of restaurants. Leeds has excellent transport links connecting the city to the rest of the UK. Also, it has an airport (Leeds Bradford Airport) which is extremely useful for international students who want to fly home regularly.  

Above that, as a Muslim student, there are many Halal markets and restaurants all over the city. In addition to the four big mosques in the city, Leeds university provides designated prayer areas in its three libraries for students to pray and other areas for Jumu’ah prayer.  

I live in private accommodation that has different facilities such as agym, lounge, and bookable event room. My resident has monthly activities yoga classes, a reading club, morning breakfasts and etc. It is about 30 mins walk from the school, but it does not feel that far. I really enjoy the morning walk to the school because I can listen to my favourite podcasts while walking, observe different types of people in the street while passing through the city centre everyone is going to their own business. Above that, I can reach my daily steps target by the end of the day 🙂  

I hope I gave a brief and quick overview of the university and city although there are a lot of things I have not discovered yet and I am looking forward to discovering them in the coming years.  

 Please feel free to ask me any questions via UniBuddy or email me at norah-link@leeds.ac.uk.