A major area of research concerns the design and analysis of experiments for determining the reliability and performance of a system. The system can be either a physical or biological one, so there are applications to reliability and quality control in engineering as well as clinical and animal trials in biomedicine. Several topics in this area are being explored. These include efficient designs for quality monitoring of laboratory work, nonparametric performance measures for assessment of diagnostic indicators, failure-time analysis when treatment effect may be lagged, statistical design and analysis of sequential experiments, accelerated life tests with concomitant information, and study of marker processes as indicators of degradation or failure. Applications of the last topic on this list include use of PSA as a longitudinal biomarker for prostate cancer.

A secondary area of research is concerned with the analysis of spatial point process data; in particular the detection of presence or absence clustering of events. Recent applications have included incidence of leukemia in an Upstate New York region in relation to sites of listed toxic waste dumps, and incidence of childhood leukemias in Sweden in relation to locations of nuclear power plant facilities.

However, the principal area of current research is the subject of Turnbull's recent book (co-authored with Chris Jennison) on statistical methods for the design, monitoring and analysis of clinical trials.

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