Event Details

Applied statistics plays a vital role in the analysis and evaluation of public policies in various fields including social sciences, economics, health sciences, population studies etc. This workshop will promote research collaborations and exchange ideas between academics and researchers doing research in applied statistics and public policy and those doing research in computational statistics and data analysis methods, and to establish connections between researchers at tertiary institutions and working in industry in Australasia.

List of speakers:

Professor Peter Davis (The University of Auckland) is a world leader in the development of Statistical Methods and Policy Application in the Social and Health Sciences. Until recently he was Senior Editor (Health Policy), Social Science and Medicine. In 2003 Peter was the recipient of the New Zealand Medical Association’s highest honour, the Chairman’s Award. Peter has cross-appointments in the Department of Statistics and in the School of Population Health, and also heads the COMPASS (Centre of Methods and Policy Application in the Social Sciences) Research Centre.

Professor Laurie Brown (University of Canberra) is one of Australasia’s leading health geographers and modellers. Laurie has over 25 years experience in public policy and practice and researching the impacts of demographic, social and economic change. She has an academic background in health geography, population studies, epidemiology, health economics and health services research. Laurie has been a consultant to the New Zealand and Australian Governments and various State and Territory Governments. Laurie is currently playing a leading role in the development and application of microsimulation models and the use of micro-data for investigating policy issues in health, disability, ageing and caring in Australia and internationally.

Professor Ann Harding (University of Canberra) is the founder and inaugural director of the leading research centre the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM). During the past decades Ann has led the development of highly sophisticated microsimulation models and databases, so that policy makers can gain much better information about the likely distributional impact of current and proposed policies. More recently Ann has steered microsimulation modelling in Australia beyond its traditional ‘tax and social security’ focus to such new areas as health, aged care, housing and regional issues, with the goal of extending sophisticated quantitative decision-support tools to policy makers in these areas. Ann has published widely on social statistics, income inequality, poverty, and the distributional impact of government programs, housing and is a prolific contributor to public policy debate in Australia. She was elected a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and served as elected President of the International Microsimulation Association from 1993 to 2011.

Dr Delwar Hossain (University of Southern Queensland) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Rural and Remote Area Health (CRRAH), a joint venture research centre for the University of Queensland and USQ. He is one of the leading experts on mental health and policy applications research in Australia. He has almost two decades of academic experience with an extensive research publication history on social and environmental determinants of mental illness in Australia, indigenous health, malnutrition in developing countries, health policy evaluation for rural communities etc.

Dr Azizur Rahman (CSU) is a Lecturer in Statistics at the Charles Sturt University and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Canberra, Australia. He has previously worked as a research fellow in Biostatistics and Population Health at the University of Adelaide where he was collaborated with Professor John Lynch, NHMRC Australia Fellow and some other key researchers in Australia, UK and Canada. Dr Rahman’s research interests span to the discipline of statistics, small area estimation and microsimulation modelling, biostatistics and population health and applied economics. He has published a wide range of scholarly manuscripts on his research areas.

Dr Cathy Gong (ANU) is a research fellow at the Centre for Research on Ageing, Health and Wellbeing (CRAHW) and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR). Her research has focused on income inequality, income mobility, employment, social exclusion and disadvantage across the life course. She had been working as a Research Fellow at University of Canberra and an Assistant Director at DEEWR and a Statistician at National Bureau of Statistics of China. She works closely with policy makers and the community sector to provide an evidence base to inform the development of effective social policy. She has published on the areas of intergenerational mobility, income and health inequality, spatial disparity, disadvantage and social exclusion etc.