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Dirk Kroese's research interests are in: Monte Carlo methods, rare-event simulation, the cross-entropy method, applied probability, and randomised optimisation.

Dirk Kroese is a professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the School of Mathematics and Physics of the University of Queensland. He has held teaching and research positions at The University of Texas at Austin, Princeton University, the University of Twente, the University of Melbourne, and the University of Adelaide. His research interests include Monte Carlo methods, adaptive importance sampling, randomized optimization, and rare-event simulation. He has over 120 peer-reviewed publications, including six monographs:

• Rubinstein, R.Y., Kroese, D.P. (2004). The Cross-Entropy Method: A Unified Approach to Combinatorial Optimization, Monte-Carlo Simulation, and Machine Learning, Springer, New York.
• Rubinstein, R. Y. , Kroese, D. P. (2007). Simulation and the Monte Carlo Method, 2nd edition, John Wiley & Sons.
• Kroese, D.P., Taimre, T., and Botev, Z.I. (2011). Handbook of Monte Carlo Methods, Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics, John Wiley & Sons, New York.
• Kroese, D.P. and Chan, J.C.C. (2014). Statistical Modeling and Computation, Springer, New York.
• Rubinstein, R. Y. , Kroese, D. P. (2017). Simulation and the Monte Carlo Method, 3rd edition, John Wiley & Sons.
• Kroese, D.P., Botev, Z.I., Taimre, T and Vaisman, R. (2019) Data Science and Machine Learning: Mathematical and Statistical Methods, Chapman & Hill/CRC.
• Kroese, D.P. and Botev, Z.I. (2023). An Advanced Course in Probability and Stochastic Processes, Chapman & Hill/CRC.

Veronika Kuchta received her Diploma degree in Mathematics at the Heidelberg University in Germany in 2010. She reseived her PhD in applied cryptography at the University of Surrey, United Kingdom in 2016. She worked as a postdoc at the Universite libre de Bruxelles in Belgium from 2016-2018. From 2018 till 2020 she has been a Research Fellow at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. FromDecember 2020 to July 2022 she was employed by The University of Queensland, School of Mathematics and Physics as a lecturer in mathematical cryptography. From November 2022 she is Assistant Professor at Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton, USA), department of mathematical sciences. Her research interst focus on the different areas of mathematical cryptography, post-quantum cryptography and its applications to the real-world.

I was born in Argentina and found an early passion for mathematics as a high school student by participating in the Math and Programming Olympiads. I obtained an undergraduate degree from La Plata University in 2009, and a PhD in mathematics from Cordoba University under the supervision of Prof. Jorge Lauret in 2013. After that I was a postdoc in the Differential Geometry group at the University of Münster in Germany (first as a Humboldt fellow, and then as Prof. Wilking's assistant). I also spent three months at MSRI in Berkeley, California during 2016. Since mid 2018, I am a Lecturer at the School of Maths and Physics in UQ.

Carmen is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research. She is passionate about understanding why young people start using substances and dedicated to advance public health through her research. She leads a research program focused on the etiology of youth vaping and drug use, using social media data for surveillance to track trends and tackle emerging challenges. Carmen is also interested in exploring the disparities in substance use in low- and middle-income countries where she aims to deepen her understanding of substance use patterns and develop effective preventative initiatives, striving to create equitable solutions that address the unique challenges faced in these region.

Carmen has qualifications in biostatistics, public health and epidemiology and experiences in teaching and mentoring. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in addiction and mental health (Google Scholar: >8.8K citations, h-index = 37, 31% output in top 10% citation percentile). She has supported and mentored students from diverse demographic and cultural backgrounds. She’s on the lookout for self-driven, curious students with backgrounds in public health, psychology, epidemiology, or statistics to join her team.

Dr Jon Links's research interests are in: Lie Algebras, Quantised Algebras, Knot Theory, Exactly Solvable Models, Algebraic Bethe Ansatz, Models of Correlated Electrons and Models of Cold Atoms.

He received his PhD from the University of Queensland in 1993. His current research projects are in the field of designs for and control of integrable quantum devices.

Dr Barbara Maenhaut's research interests are in combinatorial design theory and graph theory.

She received her PhD from the University of Queensland in 1999. Her current research projects are in the fields of:

• Graph decompositions
• Latin squares and perfect one-factorisations

Born in Sydney Australia, 1941. Educated at North Sydney High, then Sydney University (B.A. in Philosophy, first class honours). Commonwealth Scholarship to Oxford University UK,leading to D.Phil. 1965 with thesis on "Rules of truth for modal logic". From 1965 to 1982 worked at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon (Assistant, Associate, Full Professor in the Philosophy Department), then from 1980 to 2000 as Programme Specialist in Unesco (Philosophy Division). From 2001 to 2006 Professor at King's College London (Computer Science Department), then from 2007 to 2019 Guest Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics (LSE). Currently living in Paris, and since September 2022 Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University of Queensland.

An intellectual autobiography entitled "A tale of five cities" was published in S.O. Hansson ed., David Makinson on Classical Methods for Non-Classical Problems (Series: Outstanding Contributions to Logic) Springer 2014, pp 19-32, with recollections also in an interview in The Reasoner 2014, also available at personal website mentioned below..

Neurologist

Dr McCombe graduated in Medicine from UQ and completed a Science degree for medical students. She then trained as a neurologist in Sydney, at Prince Henry and Prince of Wales Hospitals. She obtained a PhD from the University of Sydney. She obtained experience in Neurophysiology in Cleveland and then returned to UQ as a post-doctoral fellow. She worked for some years as a research fellow in Neuroimmunology and was an NHMRc SRF. Later she resumed clinical practice as a neurologist, and contimued her research as an NHMRC Practitioner Fellow. She is currentlyProfessor and Head of the Royal Brisbane Clinical school in the School of Medicine and Co-head of the Brain and Mental Health Theme at the UQ Centre for Clinical Research.

Professor Geoffrey McLachlan's research interests are in: data mining, statistical analysis of microarray, gene expression data, finite mixture models and medical statistics.

Professor McLachlan received his PhD from the University of Queensland in 1974 and his DSc from there in 1994. His current research projects in statistics are in the related fields of classification, cluster and discriminant analyses, image analysis, machine learning, neural networks, and pattern recognition, and in the field of statistical inference. The focus in the latter field has been on the theory and applications of finite mixture models and on estimation via the EM algorithm.

A common theme of his research in these fields has been statistical computation, with particular attention being given to the computational aspects of the statistical methodology. This computational theme extends to Professor McLachlan's more recent interests in the field of data mining.

He is also actively involved in research in the field of medical statistics and, more recently, in the statistical analysis of microarray gene expression data.

Ross McVinish has research interests in applied probability, Bayesian statistics and mathematical modelling of complex systems in population biology.

He received his PhD from Queensland University of Technology in 2002.

He is currently an associate editor for the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics.

Professor Mobli is a structural biologist and a group leader at the University of Queensland's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN). He is well known internationally for his contributions to the basic theory of multidimensional nuclear magnetic resonance and its applications to resolving the molecular structure of peptides and proteins, as well as studying their physiochemical properties and function. Mehdi's contributions to the field has been recognised by being appointed an Executive Editor of the AMPERE society's journal "Magnetic Resonance", and to the advisory board of the international Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank (BMRB) as well as serving on the board of directors of the Australia and New Zealand Society for Magnetic Resonance (ANZMAG). He is a former ARC Future Fellow and recipient of the ASBMB MERCK medal, the Australia Peptide Society's Tregear Award, the ANZMAG Sir Paul Callaghan medal and the Lorne Proteins Young Investigator Award (now Robin Anders Award).

Prof. Mobli's research group focuses on characterising the structure and function of receptors involved in neuronal signalling, with a particular focus on developing new approaches for the discovery and characterisation of modulators of these receptors through innovations in bioinformatics, biochemistry and and biophysics. This work has led to publication of more than 100 research articles attracting over 6,000 citations.

Dr Evgenii Nekhoroshev is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Chemical Engineering and a member of the Pyrometallurgy Innovation Centre led by Prof. Evgueni Jak.

He graduated with a Master in Chemistry (chemical thermodynamics) from Lomonosov's Moscow State University, Deparment of Chemistry in 2012. His Master's Thesis was "Thermodynamic optimization of the NaOH-Al(OH)3-Na2SiO3-H2O system for applications in Bayer's process of bauxite treatment" as part of a bigger project initiated in collaboration with Rusal company aimed at utilisation/valorisation of red mud residues accumulated during the production of aluminium oxide from bauxite ores.

In 2019, he completed a PhD in Metallurgical Engineering at Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal, Canada within The Centre For Research in Computational Thermodynamics (CRCT), where he acquired expertise in FactSage software, multicomponent database development, and was included in the list of official collaborators of FactSage. His PhD thesis was "Thermodynamic optimization of the Na2O-K2O-Al2O3-CaO-MgO-B2O3-SiO2 system" sponsored by Glass Consortium including Corning and SCHOTT glass producers. The purpose of the database he developed was to assist the industry in designing new glasses with special properties: chemically hardened glasses (smartphones), technical glasses with high thermal and chemical resilience (boron-containing glasses), chemically inert glasses, etc.

Short after receiving his PhD, Dr Evgenii Nekhoroshev accepted a position at The University of Queensland as part of the Pyrometallurgy Innovation Centre's team where he has an official title of Theme Leader in Thermodynamic Computations, combining his broad expertise in metallurgy, chemical engineering, applied mathematics, and programming.

Dr Evgenii Nekhoroshev has always been passionate about formalisation and automation of big research tasks. He started working on developing an automated solver for thermodynamic optimisation during his PhD thesis which was improved and finalised using the ideas of Prof. Evgueni Jak about real-time derivative matrix optimization and sensitivity analysis applicable to large multicomponent systems. His contribution to the Centre allowed to make transition to a continuous optimization approach when experimental and modelling streams of work in the Centre are efficiently combined together. It allows to include the most recent experimental datasets into a self-consistent database update with minimal time delays.

Chris O’Donnell obtained his PhD from the University of Sydney. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Productivity Analysis, an Associate Editor of Empirical Economics, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society. His current research is focused on economic and statistical methods for measuring and explaining productivity and efficiency change. He has authored or co-authored three books on this topic. His work has been published in leading economics and econometrics journals, including the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the Journal of Econometrics, the Journal of Applied Econometrics, Econometric Reviews and the European Journal of Operational Research. He has provided in-house training and/or been a consultant for organisations including the World Bank, the Asian Productivity Organisation, the International Rice Research Institute, the Australian Energy Regulator, the New South Wales Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, and the Australian Independent Hospital Pricing Authority.

I studied Technical Mathematics at the Vienna University of Technology. I also earned a Master's degree in Law and I finished the first ("non-clinical") part of Medical Studies at the University of Vienna. I earned my PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of Vienna in 2007. My PhD advisor was Christian Schmeiser, my co-advisor was Peter Markowich. I spent several months at the University of Buenos Aires working with C. Lederman and at the ENS-Paris rue d'Ulm in the group of B. Perthame.

Before coming to UQ, I held post-doc positions at the Wolfgang Pauli Insitute (Vienna), University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (RICAM). In 2013 I won an Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). I was a post-doc researcher in the group of Alex Mogilner first at UC Davis, then at the Courant Institute of Math. Sciences (New York University).

Yang is currently a Honorary Research Fellow in UQ School of Public Health and a Research Fellow in Cancer Epidemiology Division of Cancer Council Victoria. He has extensive experience in analysing large-scale national and international health surveys and hospitalisaiton datasets with complex statistical models. He is interested in answering a couple of research questions in the population level (e.g. the associations between modifiable behaviors and chronic diseases; the inequalities in chronic disease risk).

Emeritus Professor Phil Pollett has research interests in Markov process theory, and mathematical modelling in population biology, ecology, epidemiology, chemical kinetics and telecommunications.

He holds an honours degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Adelaide and a PhD degree in Applied Probability from the University of Cambridge. He joined the then Department of Mathematics in 1987 as Senior Lecturer, having previously held positions at the University of Adelaide, Murdoch University and University College of Cardiff. He was promoted to Reader in 1993 and to Professor in 2004.

His research is recognized internationally for significant contributions to Markov process theory, and mathematical modelling. This research has been supported by 12 ARC Large/Discovery/Linkage grants. He is a Chief Investigator within the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistics Frontiers (ACEMS), and was a Chief Investigator (2002-2014) within the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems (MASCOS). In 1993, he was awarded the Moran Medal by the Australian Academy of Science for distinguished research in Applied Probability.

Phil Pollett has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society, Methodology and Computing in Applied Probability, Stochastic Models, and The Annals of Applied Probability, and has served on the organizing committees of several major international conferences. He devised the Probability Web, recognized as the main Web resource for probabilists throughout the world, and one of the first academic web sites. He has a strong record of innovation in undergraduate teaching, and has guided the development of many postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows through supervision and collaboration.

I research extrasolar planets - planets around other stars - and focus on developing and applying new data science approaches for detecting and characterizing them. I have taken nearly every approach to exoplanet and stellar observation, including transits, radial velocities, direct imaging, and asteroseismology.

As an ARC DECRA Fellow I'm mainly working on exoplanet direct imaging with the James Webb Space Telescope, and especially how we can use differentiable & probabilistic programming to enhance data analysis to detect faint objects in noisy data. I also work on radio astronomy to study planets' magnetic interactions with their host stars, and using radiocarbon in tree rings as a tracer of long term solar activity.

I grew up in Sydney, New South Wales, and studied for my Honours and Masters at the University of Sydney. I studied abroad at the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2017 I completed my DPhil in Astrophysics at Balliol College, Oxford. From 2017-20 was a NASA Sagan Fellow at the NYU Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics and Center for Data Science. I'm now a Lecturer in Astrophysics and DECRA Fellow at the University of Queensland.

I'm into open source, open science, and climate action. I was a member of the winning Balliol College team in the 2016-17 series of University Challenge on BBC2, with the wonderful Joey Goldman, Freddy Potts, and Jacob Lloyd. Sometimes I write: see my latest piece in The Monthly, about the possible discovery of phosphine on Venus.