COVID-19: Unexpected Opportunities and Lessons for Australia's Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and Epidemiological Community

B&B Section Webinar:  COVID-19: Unexpected Opportunities and Lessons for Australia's Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and Epidemiological Community

Several Australian scientists were unexpectedly shot to prominence during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Biostatistical concepts and models were discussed on breakfast television and news radio, presenting a significant communication challenge. At the same time, a number of our community actively and publiclycritiqued high-profile studies of COVID-19, generating substantial (and at times very personal) criticism. 

In this lunchtime webinar we will hear from Adrian Esterman and Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz about their whirlwind journeys from 'quiet' academia to high-profile sci-comm personality, with a focus on the lessons biostatisticians and bioinformaticians can take from these experiences. Please join us!

Presenters:

Prof Adrian Esterman

Adrian is Chair of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of South Australia, a position he has held for the past seventeen years. His career includes five years as a WHO staff member based in Geneva and two years as a staff member in the WHO European office in Copenhagen. He was for many years Principal Epidemiologist for the SA Department of Health until moving to academia. His current research covers a diverse range of medical and health areas including infectious disease, gerontology, refugee settlement, diabetes, cancer epidemiology, Indigenous health, mental health, dentistry, and nursing. He is regarded as one of Australia’s leading experts in the epidemiology of COVID-19 and is in constant demand by the media. As at 22nd February, he had 32,000 Twitter followers which has probably doubled by now!

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz (University of Wollongong)

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz is an epidemiologist working in public health in western Sydney, primarily chronic disease, and is completing his PhD with the University of Wollongong in diabetes epidemiology. He is an active Twitter user, with over 65,000 followers, and regularly blogs on Medium as well as writing columns for the Guardian and other publications. During the pandemic he has worked on a variety of meta-science projects, most recently error-detection in science, and has been involved with the uncovering of a number of fraudulent papers.