Partnerships

A team of up to four of our MSc Data Science students can spend ten months working in an engaged, yet also light-touch manner, with your organisation on a real-world data-driven project of your choosing, supervised by our faculty and at no cost to you.

Our students gain hands-on industry experience of independently formulating hypotheses, selecting methodologies and delivering suvccessful data science solutions using state-of-the-art tools. You benefit from increasing your team’s capacity with some of the LSE’s brightest young minds in the field, and ownership of any intellectual property arising from the Capstone always remains yours.

We are currently working with over 20 partners on Capstone projects, from organisations including, among others, Deloitte, Mastercard, Meta, Microsoft, Moody's, Sky, Transport for London, Wise and the World Trade Organization. Examples of recent Capstone projects include forecasting sea water transparency from satellite data, recommending digital mental health interventions, modelling tail risk in energy spread trading, detecting ghost job postings in the UK and US labour markets, and live detection of bus diversions.

Boost your talent pipeline and help develop the next generation of data scientists today.

Projects run each year for ten months, from November to August, with defined phases:

• February and April - Students share progress and receive structured feedback at all-hands presentations
• June - Draft report submitted for your review
• August - Final report delivered, with any additional outputs such as code or technical papers agreed jointly

A student team worked with the Trilemma Foundation to develop an institutional Bitcoin accumulation strategy designed to outperform a standard dollar cost averaging baseline. The Foundation provided the problem statement, the evaluation metric and access to CoinMetrics and Polymarket data, and met the team roughly every two months to guide direction. The project closed with a recorded demonstration of the findings.

“This was our first experience working in a professional industry setting, and it proved to be a valuable opportunity during our MSc in Data Science.”

Melissa, MSc Data Science student

Many of our academics participate in regular or semi-regular consultancy work. You can commission tailored research and consulting either directly with our individual faculty members or centrally via LSE consulting.

Each year we take our BSc and MSc students to Cumberland Lodge, an educational foundation set in the heart of Windsor Great Park, for a subsidised residential weekend of talks, workshops, team building and networking with faculty and alumni.

Guest speakers from industry are a highlight of the weekend. The setting is relaxed and conversational, and you'll spend time with a cohort of engaged students over talks, careers panels, meals and social sessions. It's one of the most memorable ways to connect with our community. There are opportunities to sponsor the weekend if you would like a deeper association with it and to help us continue these popular events.

You can make one-off or regular gifts and donations to the Department.

We have a number of attractive sponsorship opportunities, including for our flagship ‘In-Practice’ public lecture series and our Cumberland Lodge residentials.

Get in touch to discuss how you can make a difference.

Our new, in-house, flagship public lecture series. Each session brings a practitioner (or practitioners) to the LSE campus to share their knowledge and experience, and to demonstrate how they work with statistics and data science in their industry and organisation: the challenges, opportunities, methods, trade-offs and decisions that never make it into a textbook.

In-Practice speaks directly to the five global challenges that define LSE's mission: popular government, political economy, sustainable development, inequality and new technologies. Data runs through every one of them, and the new technologies challenge, harnessing innovation to accelerate positive change while limiting its potential for harm, is exactly the conversation In-Practice exists to host. Our students learn rigorous methodology in the classroom. In-Practice shows them what they can achieve in the real-world.

Sessions run as informal evening lectures followed by a networking reception, with audiences bringing together students, researchers, alumni, and external guests.

• Put your organisation and its work in front of the specialist LSE statistics and data science community
• Meet potential hires, Capstone project collaborators and research contacts in one evening
• A relaxed, conversational format: a talk, questions and networking, with full support from our engagement and communications team

Meet your future analysts before anyone else does. Many of our students undertake an internship during their time at the Department You can advertise your data-related internship opportunities of any duration directly to our Department’s 600+ student community, or you can host a BSc Actuarial Science student for a paid placement.

Students on our BSc Actuarial Science (with a Placement Year) course spend 9-12 months working in a full-time, paid role, in an organisation between their second and final year. They arrive with two years of training in risk, business and investment analysis, and quantitative problem solving, ready to contribute to real projects from day one.

Beyond fresh thinking and additional capacity, placements are a proven route to developing your future graduate workforce, and they present opportunities for your current staff to gain mentoring and line management experience.

• Full time, UK based, paid (minimum wage+)
• Suitable host organisations include those working across insurance, pensions, consulting, risk management, finance, tech and data analytics
• LSE Careers provides a dedicated Placements Coordinator who prepares students before they start and supports you and the student throughout the year
• Your main commitments are meaningful work, a named supervisor and feedback three times during the year

We currently have around 28 doctoral students in the Department, and at present we are able to offer 5 internal and 2 external funded studentships. We are keen to grow this offer. Your support in funding PhD studentshipswill help us expand our doctoral programme and diversify those who benefit from support.

If you are interested in working with our students but a year-long project is more commitment than you need, the Practitioners' challenge is a super-fast format for engagement with a small team of our students around a real-world issue or challenge facing your organisation.

Each year we run a competitive five-week challenge in Winter Term, where teams of BSc and MSc students tackle real-world issues or challenges organisations have invited us to work on. Teams present their findings to you and the Department and submit a technical report.

Allianz

Aviva

JP Morgan

QBE Insurance

UBS

Our student prizes recognise and reward academic excellence. Partners are invited to award and cerificate presentations on-campus with professional photography. We partner with the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, Winton, and the Worshipful Company of Actuaries, as well as a number of individuals, for our current roster of prizes.

Bowley Prize

A £350 prize is awarded annually to the student(s) who produce the best third-year undergraduate project in Applied Statistics (ST312).

Cyril Offord Prize

The prize is awarded annually for outstanding performance in Mathematics in one of the following degree programmes: BSc Financial Mathematics and Statistics, BSc in Mathematics and Economics, BSc Mathematics with Economics and BSc in Mathematics, Statistics and Business. The prize consists of £250 and a book chosen by the Department of Mathematics. It may be divided into two prizes of £125 and a book each if joint winners are deemed appropriate. More information here.

Farr Prize

Two prizes of £250 each are awarded annually to undergraduate students from the Departments of Mathematics or Statistics who achieve the best performance in their final year examinations. More information here.

The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) Prizes

Two prizes of one year’s free IMA membership are awarded for outstanding performance in the final year of IMA-approved degree programmes. Since all degree programmes within the Departments of Mathematics and Statistics hold IMA approval, this award represents a joint departmental decision.

Winton Prize(s) for Academic Excellence in the BSc Data Science programme

A £500 prize is awarded for outstanding overall performance in the BSc Data Science programme. It may be divided into two prizes of £250 each if joint winners are deemed appropriate.

Undergraduate Women in STEM Academic Award

A £500 prize is awarded to an outstanding undergraduate woman in Statistics for exceptional overall performance. This award recognises a student who has demonstrated exceptional academic achievement, shown intellectual curiosity through involvement in academic projects, and dedication to her field of study. It may be divided into two prizes of £250 each if joint winners are deemed appropriate.

Winton Prizes for Academic Excellence in Statistics with Financial Applications

Two prizes of £500 each are awarded to the undergraduate Statistics students who achieve the highest weighted average marks in the Stochastics and Actuarial Methods in Finance course (ST330).

The Worshipful Company of Actuaries (WCA) Prizes

Two prizes of £250 each are awarded to the most outstanding BSc Actuarial Science students during their second year of study. This is not a school prize. The WCA provides the funding directly, and the Department arranges a presentation ceremony where WCA members present the awards to the recipients.

Winton Prize for Academic Excellence in MSc Statistics/MSc Statistics (Financial Statistics) and MSc Statistics (Social Statistics)

This prize will be awarded to the student with the highest overall mark in their assessments. Prize: £500.

Winton Prize for Best Dissertation in MSc Statistics/MSc Statistics (Financial Statistics)/MSc Statistics (Social Statistics)

This prize will be awarded to the student with the highest mark in their dissertation. Prize: £500.

Winton Prize for Academic Excellence in MSc Data Science

This prize will be awarded to the MSc Data Science student with the highest overall marks in their assessments. Prize: £500.

Winton Prize for Best Capstone Project in MSc Data Science

This prize will be awarded to the group of MSc Data Science students with the highest overall mark in their Capstone Project. Prize: £500 (divided equally between the group members).

Rajendra Bhansali Prize

This Prize is made possible by a generous donation from Rajendra Bhansali, graduate (BSc Econ), 1967 and PhD, 1971) and former member of staff (1967-68) of LSE and now Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Liverpool. The prize is awarded to a MSc Quantitative Methods for Risk Management student with the best overall performance. Prize: £200

Companies can host a student visit at your offices. These are a great way to showcase your work and career opportunities at your organisation.

These visits typically include:

• Office‑based careers talks and panel discussions

• Opportunities to meet senior professionals, recent graduates and alumni

• Honest conversations about career routes, skills development and day‑to‑day work

Recent visits have included firms such as Forvis Mazars and EY, where students engaged directly with practitioners across actuarial science, professional services and data‑driven roles.

These visits help students:

• Understand how academic skills are applied in practice

• Explore different career pathways early in their studies

• Build confidence engaging with employers in professional settings

Companies can deliver a workshop on a statistics or data science topic on our campus or at your offices if you are located in London or the south east. This is a great way to showcase your work and meet potential future hires in a relaxed setting.