
I am an ecological statistician who advances methodology for data analysis in ecology, to improve the ability of ecologists to answer important research questions. I lead the Eco-Stats group, which has attracted over $8M in ARC research funding, and is based in the School of Mathematics and Statistics and affiliated with the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre. My cross-disciplinary research involves evaluating the methods for data analysis currently used in ecology, and where necessary, developing new methodologies to assist ecologists answer key research questions. I am also the founding director of Stats Central, the UNSW statistical consulting and collaboration unit.
2019-22 Highly Cited Researcher (Web of Science group)
2020 Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales
2014 Christopher Heyde Medal (for contributions to statistics and probability theory), Australian Academy of Sciences
2014 Young Investigator Award, American Statistical Association (Section on Statistics and the Environment)
2009 NSW/ACT Young Tall Poppy Award for research achievement and science communication
2005 Learning and Teaching Award, UNSW Faculty of Science
My cross-disciplinary research is primarily of a statistical nature but it involves collaborating with ecologists as well as statisticians and researchers from related disciplines, nationally and internationally. Although my research is grounded in ecological questions, it ranges from applied to quite theoretical, with methodological contributions to multivariate analysis (for applications in allometry), high-dimensional data analysis (for applications in community ecology), model selection and point process modelling (for species distribution modelling). But I would be willing to try my hand at pretty much any challenging methodological problem arising in ecology!
Director of Stats Central
Deputy Director of Postgraduate Studies (Coursework), School of Mathematics and Statistics
Associate Editor, Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics
Associate Editor, Annals of Applied Statistics
My Research Supervision
Maeve McGillyCuddy (2018-), Model-based mixed model inference for multivariate abundances
Michelle Lim (2018-), Equivalence testing of multivariate abundances for restoration studies
Ben Maslen (2021-), Using machine learning to classifying fish from videos
Sam Mason (2021-), Spatio-temporal species distribution modelling
For more details see Eco-Stats - People.
My Teaching
MATH5935 - Statistical Consultancy.
MATH2089 - Numerical Methods and Statistics
DATA3001 - Data Science and Decisions in Practice