Affiliate of Australian Women's and Girls' Health Research Centre
Australian Women's and Girls' Health Research Centre
Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences
Lecturer - Biostatistics
School of Public Health
Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences
Availability:
Available for supervision
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.
Dr. Tatiana Proboste is a Research Fellow at the Spatial Epidemiology Lab (UQ), specialising in zoonotic disease transmission and spatiotemporal analysis. Her work utilises spatial models and network analysis techniques to enhance our understanding of disease transmission dynamics, particularly within wildlife populations and at the wildlife-human interface.
As a veterinarian with a robust background in terrestrial ecology and biodiversity management, Dr. Proboste brings a unique perspective to her research. She holds a Master’s degree from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, where she focused on wildlife disease ecology and molecular tools. Her academic pursuits led her to earn a PhD from the University of Queensland in 2020, with her doctoral research centring on the use of genetic analysis tools to study wildlife’s role in disease transmission in modified environments.
Dr. Proboste’s contributions to research are extensive and varied. She has been involved in projects ranging from the molecular detection of tick-borne pathogens to the development of tools for exploring wildlife’s role in disease transmission. Recent years have seen her focus on investigating mosquito-borne disease outbreaks, identifying Q fever clusters in Queensland and associated risk factors, and applying network analysis to estimate contact rates in feral pig populations in eastern Australia. In addition to her research, Dr. Proboste is a casual lecturer at the School of Veterinary Science. She is also part of the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, Q fever Interest Group and the HEAL Network
Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences
Availability:
Available for supervision
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.
Affiliate of Australian Women's and Girls' Health Research Centre
Australian Women's and Girls' Health Research Centre
Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences
Senior Lecturer in Biostatistics
School of Public Health
Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences
Availability:
Not available for supervision
Media expert
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.