Thanks to support from the Theo Murphy Initiative Australia from the Australian Academy of Science, we're excited to launch Essential skills for statistics leadership in consultancy and research, a two-day Statistical Leadership Symposium for early and mid-career researchers across Australia.
Running from 9 to 10 July 2026 in Brisbane and Melbourne, this dual-hub in-person event aims to strengthen leadership capability among statisticians working in consultancy and research across all sectors: academia, government, and industry.
What to expect:
Themes include:
We thank the Australian centre for Health Services Innovation(AusHSI) at QUT and Methods and Implementation Support for Clinical and Health research Hub at The University of Melbourne for help with organising the symposium.
Got a question about the symposium? Email us at: statsleadership.symposium@gmail.com.
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| Emi Tanaka (Brisbane) | Eric Vance (virtual) | Tonya Esterhuizen (Brisbane) |
| Dr Emi Tanaka is an academic statistician at the Australian National University (ANU) with a passion for data science and open-source software. Her work spans experimental design, mixed-effects models, data visualization, emerging analytics (machine/deep learning and large language models) and developing better statistical workflows, practice and tools. She leads the team for the Analytics for The Australian Grains Industry Project Partnership (https://anu-aagi.github.io/), collaborating with multiple external partners on data-driven projects for the grains industry. | A/Prof Eric A. Vance is the Director of the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA) at the University of Colorado Boulder USA, and the Global Director of the LISA 2020 Global Network, with 37 statistics and data science collaboration laboratories in 11 developing countries. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA), an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and was a 2023-24 U.S. Senior Fulbright Scholar in Indonesia. | A/Prof Tonya Esterhuizen is the head of the Biostatistics Unit, in the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa and an elected member of the International Statistics Institute. With 26 years’ experience in academic environments, she is passionate about collaborating with researchers, students and organisations to design and carry out impactful studies, apply valid statistical methods, and interpret research findings appropriately. |
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| Joanne Potts (Melbourne) | Jonathan Tuke (Melbourne) | |
| Dr Joanne Potts is an Accredited Statistician with the Statistical Society of Australia and the Director of The Analytical Edge, an independent consulting firm based in southern Tasmania. Her work centres on the design and analysis of ecological data, including abundance estimation, species distribution modelling, and demographic modelling. | Dr Tuke started his career as a veterinarian. After 12 years, he headed back to university to study maths and ended up with a PhD in statistics. He now lectures in statistics at the University of Adelaide and strongly believes that everyone should know stats. | |
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| Nicole White | Karen Lamb | Lizzie Korevaar |
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| Adrian Barnett | David Price | Anurika De Silva |
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| Peixuan Li | Louise Marquart-Wilson (UQ & Cancer Council Qld) |