Congratulations to Basim Alsaedi from University of Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, and formerly from the University of New England where he completed his PhD, who has won the 2020 Dennis Trewin prize. Basim has received $1000 and a complimentary one-year SSA student membership for his efforts. 

The Dennis Trewin Prize, named after the former Australian Statistician, is awarded to a student from the ACT or regional NSW for their postgraduate research in statistics or data science. This year, five applications were received, from which shortlisted applicants were asked to submit a 15-20 minute recorded talk on their topic. Based on these submissions, we were privileged to have an external selection panel comprising of Dennis Trewin, Geoff Lee, Marijke Welvaert and Rachael Quill to decide on the recipient of the prize.   

As the winner of the Dennis Trewin prize, Basim presented his research on the topic of “Bayesian Modelling of Ion-selective Electrode Sensor Arrays” at the October Canberra branch meeting, which had an attendance of 29. Basim’s talk centred around the concept of the Limit of Detection (LoD) of a sensor – the lowest amount of a substance that can be reliably distinguished from absence of that substance for a given confidence limit. He proposed a Bayesian approach to determining the LoD that accounts for estimation uncertainty. This was then extended to the case where multiple sensors were being simultaneously used for substance detection.  

Following the talk, there was engaging discussion regarding the methodology used and the relevance of Basim's work to COVID testing. We thank Basim for presenting his fascinating research.  

Francis Hui