Find an expert

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. He was awarded over $13m funding as chief investigator and has over 200 publications. His recent research focuses on addiction epidemiology, including vaping, cannabis use, and behavioral addiction such as gaming disorder. 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.

A/Prof Mark D. Chatfield is a highly experienced statistician in the UQ Clinical Trials Centre and collaborates with researchers across the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences.

In collaboration with health and medical researchers, he has published >200 times in academic journals. He has been an investigator on 30 NHMRC/MRFF funded (>$57M) studies (mostly clinical trials). He has >20 years of experience as a biostatistician in Australia (Brisbane, Darwin, Sydney) and the UK (Cambridge, 2002-2009). He has co-supervised 8 PhD students to completion.

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 and blandaltman commands.

He is an Honorary Fellow (Associate Professor) with Menzies School of Health Research.

In biostatistics, the real measure of good work is not the journal’s impact factor or the size of the grant, but whether the analysis is honest, the methods are fit for purpose, and the findings can be trusted to guide decisions. Dr Darssan aims to do this kind of work: careful, transparent, and selective within focused teams of like-minded colleagues where statistical thinking is shared rather than outsourced. The goal remains constant: better evidence that ultimately advances modelling of geographical patterns and environmental impacts.

His research centres on applying and extending statistical methods, particularly spatial and environmental approaches, to address practical problems in complex observational and environmental data. He remains committed to transparent, reproducible practice and to mentoring the next generation of applied spatial and environmental modellers.

Dr Darssan values teaching that builds genuine statistical confidence rather than surface-level competence. His approach centres on active learning, real-world data, and creating an environment that encourages students to ask questions, challenge ideas, and think critically. He uses R-based workshops, practical case studies, and structured discussion to develop computational skill, logical reasoning, and critical judgement. As a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), he remains committed to reflective, student-centred practice that prepares learners to use statistics thoughtfully in their future work. He has taught approximately 1,300 postgraduate and 1,000 undergraduate students in foundational and applied statistics, and has supervised 9 Master’s dissertations and 8 PhD students to completion.

He values service as service, not as a means of promotion or personal return, but as a genuine commitment to helping others. Externally, he contributed as Statistics Editor for Clinical Toxicology, Associate Editor for Archives of Environmental and Occupational Health, President of the Statistical Society of Australia – Queensland Branch, Webinar Coordinator for the Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences section of the American Statistical Association, and Social Media Editor for the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics. He also regularly reviews manuscripts and examines research theses.

Within the University, he has served as Program Director of the Bachelor of Health Sciences, co-founder of the Environmental Epidemiology Research Group, Engagement Coordinator for current students, PhD progress review chair and thesis examiner. He also developed the School’s LinkedIn presence. He particularly values conversations with like-minded people who undertake service for its own sake, rather than for personal benefit.

As a service statistician, Dr Darssan has spent years supporting investigator-initiated clinical trials, contributing to study design, randomisation, protocol development, statistical analysis plans, final reports, and data safety monitoring. He has provided statistical expertise to clinicians and researchers across ophthalmology, nephrology, rheumatology, endocrinology, and health services research.

Dr Darsy Darssan is a Senior Lecturer in Biostatistics at The University of Queensland’s School of Public Health. He holds three degrees in Statistics from mathematical sciences schools: a BSc (Hons) from the University of Jaffna (2005), an MAppSc from RMIT University (2008), and a PhD from Queensland University of Technology (2014). His early career included roles at the Australian Council for Educational Research, the University of New South Wales, and the University of Wollongong, followed by postdoctoral research in biostatistics at the University of Liverpool, UK. He returned to Australia in late 2015 and has been at UQ ever since.

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

Dr Jonathan Davies is a chronic pain researcher working to improve how pain is understood, assessed and treated. His research focuses on pain phenotyping, precision pain care, and the psychological, physiological and contextual factors that shape pain and treatment response.

At UQ’s Centre for Innovation in Pain and Health Research, he contributes to DISCERN, an NHMRC Synergy-funded multidisciplinary research program developing and validating new approaches to pain assessment. A major focus of his work is DECIPHER PAIN, a standardised, multimodal tool designed to characterise the relative contributions of nociceptive, neuropathic and nociplastic pain and support more personalised care.

His research integrates clinical assessment, quantitative sensory testing, experimental pain methods, psychophysiology, digital health and population data. He is particularly interested in how physiological signals, behaviour, language, psychosocial context and real-world health data can be combined to better understand individual differences in pain and treatment outcomes.

His broader expertise includes placebo and nocebo effects, mindfulness, mental health, quality of life, health outcome measurement and population health. His work aims to support more precise, scalable and patient-centred approaches to pain research and care.

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).

Professor Jason Ferris, is the Director of Research and Statistical Support Services for the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences and the UQ Deputy Director of Data Science Collaborative Research Platform (CRP). Professor Ferris is also a co-lead for Kaleidoscope Research Collaborative at the School of Public Health, UQ. He is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD) and 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) and contributes internationally as a World Health Organization (WHO) advisor, providing expertise and technical guidance on substance use trends and harm‑reduction policy development.

Since 2020, Professor Jason Ferris, in collaboration with Dr Dom Gorse (Director of UQ's Data Science CRP) and many others from QCIF and UQ, have been working on the development and deployment of 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 and Dr Gorse are now developing a UQ solution for a Trusted Research Environment (UQ-TRE). 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. Her research seeks to understand why young people start using substances and develop strategies that advance public health.

Her work spans three key areas:

(1) Youth vaping and social media, where she examines trends and the influence of social media on youth vaping; (2) Cannabis and regulation, investigating industry marketing practices and compliance with regulatory guidelines; (3) International comparisons and equity - developing culturally appropriate prevention and harm reduction strategies to address substance use in diverse contexts;

Through her research, Carmen aims to generate evidence that informs policy, guides prevention and harm reduction efforts, and support healthier futures for young people. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in addiction and mental health (Google Scholar: >10K citations, h-index = 43, 31% output in top 10% citation percentile).

Carmen holds qualifications in biostatistics, public health and epidemiology. She has experiences in teaching and mentoring students from diverse demographic and cultural background, and welcomes self-driven, curious students with interest in public health, psychology, epidemiology, or statistics to join her team.

Dr. Victor Papin is a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Queensland working in the Hickey Lab. His research focuses on improving crop breeding efficiency through advanced genomic and quantitative genetics approaches. He develops and applies haplotype stacking methodolgy to identify and combine favourable genomic regions that enhance yield, resilience, and sustainability in crops such as chickpea, lentil, and faba bean. Victor’s work bridges applied breeding and theoretical genetics: he designs simulation pipelines to optimise crossing schemes and evaluates genomic selection (GBLUP, FA models, GP) across heterogeneous environments. His ultimate goal is to build integrative, data-driven strategies that enable sustainable genetic improvement under variable climates.

Yang is currently a Adjunct Research Fellow at Prince Charles Hospital Northside Clinical Unit, UQ Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences. 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 is currently Professor of Digital Health at UQ and Conjoint Professor of Community Diabetes at Metro North Health. She 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 Clinical Director for Community Diabetes at Metro North Health.

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 $70M 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.