Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Availability:
Available for supervision
Dr Peter Baker is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
From 2021-2023, Peter was an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the School of Public Health, University of Queensland. For twelve years until the end of 2020, he was a Senior Lecturer in Biostatistics at the School of Public Health and a senior statistical collaborator, advisor and consultant to several research projects in the Faculty of Medicine, School of Public Health.
With fourty years experience as a statistical consultant and researcher, Peter has a passion for biometrics in agricultural research and biostatistics applied to public health and medical research. He also champions reproducible research and reporting and to this end has developed R and Make software to aid the workflow of data analysts in any field. As a statistical consultant and collaborator, he has contributed to many agricultural, genetic, public health and medical research projects. His contribution has ranged from advice on standard statistical approaches to the application of novel methods to improve statistical analysis or the development of new statistical methodology to fill a gap in the knowledge.
Peter's current research interests:
efficient statistical computing using R, Make, Git and related software for the workflow of data analysis,
reproducible research and reporting using R, Markdown, Quarto and Sweave,
tailoring R functions and developing bespoke packages for specific statistical analyses, and
applied statistlcal research in novel methods for epidemiological and medial research, including
graphical models for multivariate data in epidemiology,
statistical methods for modelling trajectories of alcohol consumption in youths,
propensity score analysis to adjust for selection bias in observational studies, and
Bayesian methods for epidemiological and medical MCMC studies.
Dr Baker is an Accredited Statistician (ASTAT) with the Statistical Society of Australia (see SSAI_Accreditation)
A/Prof Federica Barzi is a Principal Research Fellow in Biostatistics at the UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous Health and within the Faculty of Health and Behavioral Sciences at The University of Queensland. She was awarded a PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Sydney University in 2004 and has a BSc degree in Statistics from the University of Padova, Italy.
A/Prof Barzi is an applied Biostatistician with extensive experience on study design and data analysis of randomized clinical trials, very large observational studies and data linkage. She has worked across a variety of specialties including cardiology, nephrology, nutrition, oncology and emergency care. She has been involved in Indigenous Health since 2005 and from April 2014, with her appointment at the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, A/Prof Barzi’s contribution to research focuses solely on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health. She has co-authored over a hundred and thirty peer reviewed journal articles with colleagues from various institutions and has secured, as a CI, over 24M in research funding since 2006.
I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Digital Health and Accredited Practising Dietitian (APD) interested in the prevention and management of noncommunicable diseases, especially obesity, across the lifecourse.
Through research, I aim to add health to life and equity to health by changing policies and practices to reduce the impact of obesity.
My research program aims to forge a new nexus across dietetics, digital health and public health to improve healthy weight. In my Postdoctoral Fellowship, I have established a new evidence base that supports precision public health approaches to the prevention and management of obesity, including innovate methods of public health surveillance that can use data from sources such as electronic medical records. I trained as a Paediatric Dietitian and have experience as a clinician-researcher working in Queensland's healthcare system, specifically in preventing and managing childhood obesity via clinical, community, and public health programs.
I have used epidemiology, public health informatics, action research, co-design, and ethnographic methods to generate new knowledge in obesity and digital health. I was awarded my PhD (UQ) in November 2020, which developed and validated i-PATHWAY, a clinical model to predict childhood obesity from the first 1,000 days to help guide its prevention. This research was the first of its kind in Australia and uncovered new evidence for risk factors for childhood obesity that are evident from the early years.
At The University of Queensland (UQ), I am a member of the Queensland Digital Health Centre, located within the Centre for Health Services Research (Faculty of Medicine). I established and currently Co-Chair the UQ Digital Health HDR Cohort, which provides research mentorship and support to ~20 PhD, MPhil and Honours research students.
Our team partners closely with multiple healthcare and research organisations across Australia to innovate and translate obesity research into practice, including Health and Wellbeing Queensland (public health and prevention of chronic diseases), Queensland Health (healthcare system) and the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre (digital health research). I hold an Honorary Appointment with Health and Wellbeing Queensland, and an Affiliate Research Fellow position with the Faculty of Medicine (UQ) to help bridge the gap between obesity research and practice.
Dr. Gary Chan is a NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research. His principal research interest lies in the field of substance misuse prevention and the application of cutting-edge statistical method for longitudinal analysis and causal inference. His recent publications have been focused on polysubstance use (including alcohol, tobacco and cannabis) profiles in adolescent populations, examinations of urban-rural differences in substance use, and the epidemiology of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis use. He collaborates extensively with leading researchers in major national and international institutes, including the University of Washington, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, University of Melbourne, and University College London. He has also served as a consultant at the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime to improve exisitng methods for monitoring global trends of illicit substance production, trafficking and use. This work has made significant impact on how global data will be collected, and these new data will be used by the United nations and many national governments to inform drug policy decision making. He is a Deputy Statistical and Methodology Editor for the journal Addiction.
Dr. Chan is also a statistical advisor at the School of Psychology, providing statistical advice to academic staff and RHD students. Since 2016, he has also delivered several advanced statistcal workshops at the School on R and statistical modelling.
A/Prof Mark D. Chatfield is a highly experienced statistician and clinical trialist working at the UQ Clinical Trials Centre.
In collaboration with health and medical researchers, he has published >200 times in academic journals. He has been an investigator on 27 NHMRC/MRFF funded (>$50M) studies (mostly clinical trials). He has co-supervised 5 PhD students to completion, and is currently an advisor to 4 PhD students. He has over 20 years of experience as a biostatistician in Australia (Brisbane | Darwin | Sydney) and the UK (Cambridge, 2002-2009).
He plays an active role in the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance Statistics in Trials Interest Group.
Stata users around the world enjoy using his table1_mc command.
He is an Honorary Fellow (Associate Professor) with Menzies School of Health Research.
Dr Darsy Darssan is an Accredited Professional Statistician® (PStat®) and a Fellow of Higher Education Academy (FHEA). He obtained three degrees in Statistics at mathematical sciences schools of three different universities: a Bachelor of Science with Honours in 2005 at University of Jaffna, a Master of Applied Science in 2008 at RMIT University and a Doctor of Philosophy in 2014 at Queensland University of Technology.
While doing his two years full time traditional face-to-face master degree, Darsy worked as a part-time Statistician at Australian Council for Educational Research for a year.
Between the two bouts of postgraduate studies, Darsy worked for two years: as a Statistician at the University of New South Wales for a year and another year as an Associate Research Fellow in Applied Statistics at the University of Wollongong.
While doing the highest degree in Statistics Darsy worked as a sessional academic, contributed to teaching introductory statistics to various cohorts of first-year undergraduate students. Upon completion of the doctoral degree, Darsy moved to the University of Liverpool in the UK to do his Postdoctoral research in Biostatistics. Darsy returned home in late 2015 and worked as a Biostatistician at The University of Queensland for three years before taking the current position.
Career Statistician:
As a career statistician, Darsy is interested in developing or extending statistical methodologies to solve problems that arise in real-world data analysis and data collection in Biomedical research.
Service Statistician:
Darsy has experience working as a service statistician. He mainly worked on clinical trials where he was involved in study designs, randomisation, protocols development, statistical analysis plans, final statistical reports. He actively participated in data safety monitoring boards. Darsy provided statistical service to Biologists, Rheumatologists, Ophthalmologists, Nephrologist, Endocrinologist and Health Service Researchers.
Professor Annette Dobson's research interests are in: Biostatistics (generalised linear modelling, clinical biostatistics, statistical methods relevant to longitudinal studies), and Epidemiology (tobacco control, cardiovascular disease, women's health).
Dr Stephane Dufau is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Cognitive neuroscience within the Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland. Stephane is a Senior Research Fellow at Mater Research (Mater Epilepsy Unit Research group). He worked as a Research Engineer at CNRS, France (currently on unpaid leave).
Professor Jason Ferris, is the Director of Research and Statistical Support Services (RASSS), University of Queensland. While providing service primarily to the Faculty of Medicine the service is expanding to support other organisation units. He is also a leading research academic at the Centre for Health Services Research (CHSR) where he is the Program Leader for Global Substance Use and Mental Health (GSUMH) unit. He holds an honorary professorial role at Turning Point, Victoria (2018-) and is also the Chief Data Scientist for the Global Drug Survey (2013-). Since 2019 he has held a ministerial appointment as an Advisory Council Member to the Queensland Mental Health Commission and is an interRAI Fellow (interrai.org).
Since 2020, Professor Jason Ferris, in collaboration with Dr Dom Gorse (Director of QCIF Data Science) and many others across QCIF and UQ, have been working on the development and deployment of UQ KeyPoint - an innovative data infrastructure, data governance and digital solution enabling researchers to access, manage, analyse and share sensitive research data in a scalable, fully governed and highly secure environment. The work has received a number of accolades. In 2023, The University of Queensland recognised the value of KeyPoint winning the Award for Excellence in Innovation. In 2022, the Faculty of Medicine recognised his commitment and leadership to the University awarding him and the team the Innovators of the Year Award. Professor Ferris has received other recognition as well. In 2021, the Faculty of Medicine recognised the outstanding support of RASSS with a Service Excellence Award. In 2020, The University of Queensland recognised his contributions to his research field: he was awarded the Faculty of Medicine Leader of the Future Award (Academic) and The Director's Choice Award for contributions to the Centre for Health Services Research. In 2019, he was awarded The Outstanding Mid-Career Researcher within the Centre for Health Services Research and was also chosen as a finalist for the Faculty of Medicine Leader of the Future Award (Academic). Additionally, across the Faculty of Medicine, his Research and Statistical Support Service, was nominated for a Service Excellence Award (2019 and 2020). In 2015, he received the University of Queensland, Early Career Researcher Award within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science. In September, 2014, he received a Highly Commended Early Career Researcher Award within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science.
He has been involved in a number of key projects: The Queensland Evaluation of the Alcohol Fuelled Violence Policy (QUANTEM), The Overarching Evaluation of the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program (CHYME), the evaluation of ProjectSTOP (a decision-making national database for pharmacists aimed at preventing the use of pseudoephedrine based products as a precursor in the manufacture of methamphetamine), and a national review of the links between random breath testing and alcohol-related road traffic accidents. Jason has over 20 years of social science and public health research experience. He has a well-established publication record with a strong focus on alcohol and drug research and public health. With a Master degree in biostatistics he has well developed and expansive quantitative methods skills and a broad range of experience in many of the facets of both social science and medical research. In 2014 his PhD on alcohol epidemiology was conferred.
Previously, as a senior statistician at the Institute for Social Science Research he developed and taught a number of training models in research methods and statistical analysis as part of the Methods for Social Analysis and Statistics (MFSAS). Since its inception in 2012 he has been course coordinator and trainer for a number of these training modules (see below). From 2016-2018 he was the Director of MFSAS. Between 2016-2017 he was also the ISSR Co-postgraduate Coordinator.
Valentin was awarded a PhD from the French National Institute of Higher Education in Agricultural Sciences and the University of Montpellier (France) in 2018. His thesis focused on methodological developments for genetic differentiation analysis in the Next Generation Sequencing era in a neutral and adaptive context. Since 2019, he works as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Queensland in the Program in Complex Trait Genomics group under the supervision of Professor Peter Visscher. His current research focuses on studying the within and between-population genetic variation in human complex traits.
Dr Huang has an Honours degree in Science (Advanced Mathematics) from the University of Sydney, and a PhD (Statistics) from the University of Chicago on a McCormick Fellowship. He previously lectured at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Technology Sydney, before moving to the University of Queensland where he is currently the Statistics Major Convenor and Mathematics Honours Coordinator.
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.
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).
A/Prof Benn Sartorius is an established spatial and global health epidemiologist, with a particular interest in the burden of infectious disease and attributable determinants at sub-national, national and global scales as a tool to help inform and optimise policy at national and subnational scales. Dr Sartorius a principal research fellow in UQ's ODeSI team at University of Queensland, an affiliate professor in Department of Health Metric Sciences at University of Washington and a honorary visiting research fellow at University of Oxfored. Prior to join UQ, Dr Sartorius was the principal investigator for the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) Project based in the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health at University of Oxford.
Dr Sartorius' research has focused on better understanding the spatial-temporal burden and risk factors of multiple IDs, including mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, sexually transmitted infections, neglected tropical diseases such as soil-transmitted helminths and onchocerciasis, vaccine preventable diseases, emerging infectious diseases and more recently focused on antimicrobial resistance. These and other examples highlight the utility of spatial epidemiology to identify higher risk areas that should be prioritised for more targeted, tailored and resource efficient intervention and control measures. However, often spatial risk estimates for IDs are often not produced in-country in settings such as the Pacific, where disease burden is high and local modelling expertise is limited, resulting in use of incomplete/biased data and resulting in inefficient and suboptimal decision-making. I’ve been a collaborator on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project since 2014 and the Scientific Council for the GBD Project since 2015. Dr Sartorius is a member of the WHO Reference Group on Health Statistics (RGHS) and chair of the Age-Specific Mortality Estimation and Life Table Computation task force. Benn's vision, through ODeSI-HERA, is to expand his international profile and leadership in spatial-temporal epidemiology of priority infectious diseases in Australia and the Pacific. This will include spatial epidemiological innovation, and capacity building to improve health outcomes in high-risk and vulnerable sub-populations within the region, and will be co-created with stakeholders in the region to ensure that it aligns with their priorities, and support precision-based decision-making systems to help policy makers optimise resource allocation and guide targeted interventions.
Professor Clair Sullivan is an internationally-recognised leading practising and academic clinical informatician who helps drive digital health transformation in Queensland and globally.
Clair is the Director of the new Queensland Digital Health Centre within the Centre for Health Research at The University of Queensland.
A specialist endocrinologist, Clair graduated with Honours in Medicine from The University of Queensland and earned a Research Doctorate in Medicine from the University of Leeds. In 2014, Clair began a parallel career in the emerging field of digital health and has held significant leadership roles in digital health practice and governance across government and academia. Her work is regularly translated into practice and informs policy in Australia and globally.
Clair was appointed Associate Professor of Medicine in Clinical Informatics at UQ and is an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology and an Adjunct Professor, School of Health and Biomedical Sciences at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
She is a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Australian College of Health Informatics and the Australasian Institute of Digital Health.
Clair serves on several national advisory boards for digital health. She is the recipient of several awards including the 2021 Premier’s Award for Excellence for her team’s work on the digital response to COVID-19 and the 2022 Telstra Brilliant Connected Women in Digital Health Award.
She has generated over $30M in grant funding and has deep collaborations with government and industry. She is ranked in the top 1% of Medical Informatics researchers globally.
Dr Michael Waller: is a biostatistician working on the Australian Longitudinal Study of Womens Health (ALSWH). He has previous experience working on cancer screening, and military health studies. His current research focus is using linked data sources to assess dementia rates and risk factors.
Dr Nicole Warrington is a NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the University of Queensland Institute for Molecular Bioscience. She has a strong background in statistical genetics and has been actively working towards understanding the genetic determinants of early life growth. Dr Warrington studied a Bachelor of Science at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, majoring in Mathematical Statistics and Psychology. She then completed an honours degree at The University of Western Australia, where she developed a keen interest for genetics, and was subsequently awarded an Australian Postgraduate Award to complete her PhD in statistical genetics and life-course epidemiology. During her PhD she spent time at the University of Toronto to gain experience in statistical modelling methods for longitudinal growth trajectories and conducted the first genome-wide association study of longitudinal growth trajectories over childhood. After completing her PhD, Dr Warrington started at the University of Queensland and focused on using genetics to inform about the relationship between birth weight and cardio-metabolic diseases in later life. She pioneered a new statistical method to partition genetic effects on birth weight into maternal and fetal components, and combined this method with a causal modelling approach, Mendelian randomization. This method was instrumental in demonstrating the relationship between birth weight and adult hypertension is driven by genetic effects, over-turning 30 years of research into the effects of intrauterine programming. More recently, her research focus has broadened to determine whether rapid weight growth across early life, including fetal development, childhood and adolescence, causally increases risk of cardio-metabolic disease and in doing so, hopes to identify optimal times across the life-course where interventions could reduce the incidence of cardio-metabolic diseases.
