What is it?

SSA Vic is proud to present a mentoring opportunity for young and early career statisticians and students. The two-hour long online event will involve, in the first hour, short career presentations from a diverse group of mentors, at various stages of their careers, across the academic, private and public sectors.

In the second half, mentees in attendance will have the opportunity to have more personal conversations with the mentors who are present, in order to discuss their careers and gain valuable advice. These personal conversations will be run in a "speed dating" format and will allow mentees to meet multiple mentors over the evening.

In order to facilitate more intimate interactions, the event will be free but members-only, for mentees.

Information regarding some of our mentors can be found below.

Registration instructions

If you wish to participate as a mentee, please register via this webpage.

If you wish to participate as a mentor, please contact the organiser: Hien Nguyen (h.nguyen5@latrobe.edu.au).

Zoom link

Link to the event's Zoom session will be provided, by email, upon registration.

Confirmed mentors

Tim Brown (Monash University)

Tim Brown was Director of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) in 2019-2020 following several years as Professor of Statistical Data Science at the University of Melbourne. Tim was Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at La Trobe University (2008-2013), Dean of the College of Science (2005-2007), Dean of the Faculty of Science (2002-2007) and Professor of Statistics at the Australian National University. Tim was President of the Australian Council of Deans of Science (2004-2006), President of the Statistical Society of Australia (1992-1994) and elected member of the International Statistical Institute.

Other academic positions include: 

• Head of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics (2000-2002), Head of the Department of Statistics (1992-1996), Professor of Statistics (1992-2002) at the University of Melbourne
• Professor of Mathematics (Probability/Statistics) at the University of Western Australia (1987-1992)
• Foundation Director of the Statistical Consulting Centre at the University of Melbourne (1984-1987).

His research interests are in probability, especially probability approximations and stochastic processes, applied statistics and educational measurement (with applications to Year 12 moderation, scaling and interstate-transfer).

Tim was also on the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority Assessment Committee from 1994 to 2002, Chair of the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre Scaling Committee from 1993 to 1998 and was Chair of the ACT Board of Senior Secondary Studies in 2007. He was President of the SSA in 1992-1993.

Angelina Bruno (Queensland Treasury)

Angelina is a Senior Economist at the Office of Productivity at Queensland Treasury, formerly known as the Queensland Productivity Commission. She has previously held Economist and Data Analyst roles at the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Intellectual Property Australia.

Angelina graduated with a Bachelor of Economics (quantitative methods major) from UQ in 2014. She is graduating from a Master of Econometrics (UQ/ANU) in 2021.

Angelina’s research projects have had a largely focused on studying Australian businesses and how they contribute to aggregate productivity and economic growth in Australia. This involves applying econometric techniques to large firm-level administrative datasets across various government departments including the ATO, ABS and IP Australia. Angelina has published 4 government research papers and 1 journal article that have been used to inform policy development and contribute to policy debate.

Nick Culpitt (Australian Energy Market Operator)

Nick Culpitt is the lead of the Supply Modelling team at the Australian Energy Market Operator which focuses on forecasting the long-term development of Australia’s electricity system. Nick studied Science (Mathematics and Statistics) and Finance at the University of Queensland before joining a boutique energy market consulting firm in Brisbane. He has over ten years experience in energy market modelling and analysis, focused primarily on market design and policy.

Harry Gielewski

I have a background in Maths, Stats, OR and Quality. My career has spanned Academic, Industrial and Commercial roles, including freelancing through my company, Stats Solutions P/L. I retired a couple of years ago after spending almost 9 years working in Credit Model Validation for Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore. Recent developments in Decision Science are fascinating as I have always enjoyed creating order out of chaos using data and quantitative tools.

Mahrita Harahap

Mahrita is a Cyber Security Data Scientist at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia working on utilising data science tools for gamification and automation problems. She graduated with a honours in Bachelor of Maths and Finance, Master of Statistics and undertook a PhD in using machine learning methods to see what sucks up the carbon dioxide in the air over Australian savannas. She’s also lectured statistics subjects, helped design a data science curriculum for UTS and contributed papers to medical journals and environmental science. Her academic career has served her well in a corporate world struggling with cultural and technological transformation. It has helped her with critical, information-based high-quality evidence based decisions throughout her career in finance, marketing, sports, defence, non-profit and media industries. Other places she’s worked as a senior data analyst or senior data scientist for are Nielsen, Defence Science Technology, Skateistan and ActiveXchange.

Brooke Jamieson (Blackbook.ai)

Brooke is the Head of Enablement – AI/ML and Data at Blackbook.ai, an Australian based consulting firm specialising in automation, artificial intelligence, data and digital. Brooke has degrees in Mathematics and Data Engineering and combines this with professional experience to work together with clients to consult, deploy and nurture intelligent solutions. Overall, they specialise in researching & developing technically robust solutions that help “non-data people” harness the power of AI for their industry and communicate this effectively.

Outside of their ‘day job’, Brooke speaks at Data, AI, Software Engineering, UX and Business conferences and events to Australian and international audiences, and has guest lectured at the University of Queensland Business School. Brooke is proudly a volunteer member of the Queensland National Science Week Committee and is always on the lookout for new ways to promote STEM pathways to young people, especially young women, and members of the LGBTIQA+ community from regional Australia.

Andrew Jones (Queensland Health)

Andrew is a statistician and data scientist currently working for Queensland Health. After completing a PhD in applied statistics at The University of Queensland in 2017, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at UQ before leaving to work in the private sector. Since then, Andrew has worked on machine learning and statistical analysis projects across many areas, including energy efficiency modelling, minerals analysis, natural language processing, energy policy and health analytics. Andrew has published several papers in population genetics and statistics and still actively contributes to publications though not working in academia. He has also written several R packages and regularly contributes to open-source software projects.

Karen Lamb (University of Melbourne)

Dr Karen Lamb is a consultant biostatistician and senior research fellow at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne. She has more than 10 years' experience as a biostatistician in public health research in both the UK and Australia. Karen is passionate about statistical communication and gets a real buzz out of helping researchers in other disciplines use statistics to answer research questions. This is often more about successful communication of statistics than it is about the statistics themselves! Karen finds the process of making non-mathematicians comfortable with mathematics to be both challenging and hugely rewarding. As a result, the focus of her research has been as diverse as the people she has been fortunate enough to work with, including doctors, psychologists, epidemiologists, social scientists, biologists and many more!

Luke Lloyd–Jones (CSIRO Data61)

Luke is a Research Scientist within CSIRO’s Data61. Luke is an applied statistician and has worked across many problems in human genetics, ecology, fisheries, and a foray into Major League Baseball. Luke obtained a Ph.D. in statistics following undergraduate studies in mathematics and statistics at the University of Queensland, followed by a five-year postdoc in human quantitative genetics. His current interest is in applying statistical genetics techniques to the management of endangered and hunted wild species.

Inga Strümke (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

Dr Inga Strümke has a master's degree in theoretical physics and a PhD in particle physics. She has previously worked as a petrophysicist in Equinor, and on trustworthy AI and algorithm auditing at PwC, and is currently a postdoctoral researcher on explainable AI at the Department of Engineering Cybernetics at the NTNU, and a part-time researcher at the Department of Holistic Systems at Simula Research Laboratory. She received the University of Bergen's outreach prize in 2019, was awarded "One of Norways 50 leading women in tech 2020" and has given a TEDx talk on responsible AI.

Emi Tanaka (Monash University)

Dr. Emi Tanaka is a lecturer in statistics at Monash University whose primary interest is to develop impactful statistical methods and tools that can readily be used by practitioners. Her research area includes data visualisation, mixed models and experimental designs, motivated primarily by problems in bioinformatics and agricultural sciences. She is currently the President of the Statistical Society of Australia Victorian Branch and is an avid programmer in R, HTML/CSS and other computational languages.

Damjan Vukcevic (University of Melbourne)

Dr Damjan Vukcevic is a statistical data scientist and a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne.  His 16 years of experience includes working both in academic and industry settings, and in his current role he regularly collaborates with industry.

Damjan's projects span diverse areas, such as genomics, ecology, astrophysics and election integrity.  He has provided expert advice to the insurance sector and policy submissions to Federal Parliament.  His most important contributions have been in statistical genomics, beginning with his DPhil studies at the University of Oxford, and continuing to his current role as a group leader at Melbourne Integrative Genomics.

Damjan is a long-standing contributor to statistics in Australia and the SSA in particular.  He has played a key role in raising our profile, growing our membership and connecting the SSA with the wider data science community.  He is currently the Vice-President of SSA Vic.

Contact us

If you have any questions regarding the event, please contact the organiser: Hien Nguyen (h.nguyen5@latrobe.edu.au).