The Victorian and Tasmanian Branch of the Statistical Society of Australia (SSA Vic & Tas) is an umbrella group for all statisticians practising in Victoria and Tasmania, and for all non-statisticians with an interest in the field of statistics.

Major branch activities include:

• Events
• Workshops
• Sponsorship of statistical events
  
• Support for Victorian and Tasmanian Early Career and Student Statisticians
  

Our events are held from March to November each year, usually on the third Tuesday of the month. Typically we would invite a speaker to give a talk on a topic of general interest to statisticians.

Our Annual General Meeting is held in March.

Our premier event of the year is the Belz Lecture, held in October or November each year.

We announce our events on our Meetup group as well as on the society's Events calendar. We also run a Slack community, which is open to everyone, not just statisticians from Victoria and Tasmania.

Current SSA Vic & Tas Council

The current council comprises of

• Alun Pope (President)
• Elena Tartaglia (Vice President) 
• Rick Tankard (Treasurer)
• Anna Wilkinson (Deputy Treasurer) 
• Chris Selman (ECSS Representative) 
• Paul Burch (Tasmanian Representative) 
• Ninh Tran (Membership Officer) 
• Patrick Robotham (Industry Representative) 
• Dennis Leung (Deputy Membership Officer) 
• Shuwen Hu (Secretary) 
• Ryan Covey (Deputy Secretary) 
• Nick Tierney (Communications Officer) 
• Victorino Marquez Grajales (Deputy Communications Officer)

The list of past councilors can be found here.

Going to ASC 2025? Apply for SSA Vic & Tas Awards!

The SSA Vic & Tas Branch is proud to support our early career and student members with financial assistance to attend the Australian Statistical Conference (ASC) 2025, to be held in Perth, Western Australia, from 1–5 December 2025.

We are offering two types of awards:

• Travel Top-Up Award – valued at $1,000
• Recognition of Impact Award – valued at $2,500

For more information about these awards, including eligibility, selection criteria, and how to apply, please refer to the Google Form here.

Applications close: Friday, 22 August 2025 at 11:59 pm AEST

If you have questions, please email vic.branch@statsoc.org.au with the subject line: “SSA Vic & Tas ASC 2025 Awards Application”.

Sponsorship of Statistical Events and Support for Victorian Early Career and Student Statisticians

The Branch Council supports worthy statistical events, particularly those with high impact, and provides financial and professional support for the Victorian Early Career and Student Statisticians Group. In recent years the Branch Council has provided some financial assistance for:

• October 2019 — Supported the travel expenses of six student members attending the Young Statisticians Conference, Canberra.
• August 2018 — Joint International Society for Clinical Biostatistics and Australian Statistical Conference, Melbourne.
• August 2018 — Payment for refreshments at Early Career Event at Joint International Society for Clinical Biostatistics and Australian Statistical Conference, Melbourne.

Workshops

The Branch Council organises workshops on topics of interest to local statisticians. Details of current workshops can be found under Events.

Some of our workshops in the past 5 years include:

• Feb 2023 - An introduction to SQL
• July 2022 - Machine learning with Python
• December 2021 - An introduction to SQL
• November 2021 - Machine learning with Python
• July 2021 - Introduction to Julia for Statistics and Data Science
• November 2020 - Data Visualisation with R
• July 2020 - Machine learning with Python
• July 2020 - Introduction to Julia for Statistics and Data Science
• July 2020 - Data Visualisation with R

The Belz Lecture

The Belz Lecture commenced in 1969 when Clem Pratt was the Victorian Branch President of the Statistical Society of Australia. It has become the premier event of the Victorian Branch calendar and is followed by the annual Belz Dinner. For more information and a list of previous Belz Lecturers, see the main Belz Lecture page.

Branch Documents

• Annual Reports: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019.
• The current Strategic Plan 2025-26
• Position description for SSA Vic Council.
• The Branch's Rules and Regulations.

Contact Details

To contact us, please email vic.branch@statsoc.org.au.