Young Statistician Showcase

5:45pm – Light refreshments in the Staff Tea Room, Richard Berry Building, The University of Melbourne.

6:15pm – Seminar in Russell Love Theatre, Richard Berry Building, The University of Melbourne.

7:30pm – Dinner with the speakers at Café Italia.

Lyndal Henden

My name is Lyndal and I did a BSc with honours majoring in mathematics and statistics in New Zealand. After this I moved to Melbourne to start a PhD in statistics and I am currently in my second year at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. I never thought I would end up where I am today and I am amazed at where statistics has taken me. I will share with you my experiences of transitioning from undergraduate to postgraduate study and introduce you to my PhD project, which uses statistics to narrow the search for disease causing mutations in related individuals.

Jason Tran

Hi everyone! I'm Jason Tran, a current PhD student at the University of Melbourne, and my supervisor is Peter Hall (if you don't know him, just look at his OWN Wikipedia page). In my talk, I'd like to just talk about my experience as a PhD student, the hardships and some of the rewarding experiences that we all share. So if you're a current student looking to do a PhD, or someone who feels the pressure of the PhD life, then I hope my talk will convince you that a PhD is a rewarding experience that no one can take away from you!

Nigel Clay

The management of blood and blood product inventories presents a challenge for the Blood Bank and Hospitals alike. There are three measures of interest in optimising the blood inventory: the number of outdates, the number of shortages and the average age of the blood in the inventory. While much work has been done in the field of inventory science there is little that addresses the specific challenges faced by inventory managers working with the blood supply. Blood and blood products are perishable, the supply is stochastic and demand is stochastic. Many papers recognise that the demand and supply of blood is stochastic however they assume that a Poisson process is followed. In this talk I will show how this is not correct. I will cover a little of the science of inventory management and explain how it applies to the management of blood inventories. I will give an example of an approach that could be extended to generalise the current assumptions to a distribution free approach. I will end with a set of questions, some of which will form the basis of my research.

Monika Buljan - Chair

Monika is the newly appointed Victoria Branch Young Statistician Representative of the Statistical Society of Australia Inc. (SSAI). She is completing an industry-based statistics PhD at RMIT through the Industry Doctoral Training Centre (IDTC). Her industry partner is the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP). Monika completed her mathematics and statistics undergraduate and Master’s degrees at La Trobe University before commencing her role as statistician at the RACGP in 2009. She is responsible for the quality assurance and analysis of clinical exams in Education Services branch. Her main project now includes exploring Item Response Theory (IRT) in the application of Australian General Practice assessments.