SSA & NZSA ECSSNs Joint Event: The Academia-Industry War: Surviving the conflict between two opposing ideals as a graduate student

Our Early Career and Student Statisticians Network from Australia and New Zealand proudly present Dr Timothy Bilton to be our first speaker of our first ever joint seminar series.

The world of industry-based research and academia typically use the same tools and methods but are often poles part in terms of research priorities and practical application of methods. This often leads to a lot of conflict between the two fields and in some cases the inability to collaborate. In this talk, he will discuss his first-hand experience of undertaking a PhD while simultaneously having one foot in academic and the other in industry. He will then discuss his journey into a Statistical consulting position in a government research institute and what life is like collecting, curating and analysing real, messy data. Lastly, he will outline where he think there is real potential for academia and industry to work together more closely and how this could benefit early career researchers.

Bio:

Dr. Timothy Bilton is a New Zealand born and breed statistician with
particular expertise in the realm of statistical genetics and 6 years of
experience conducting research within New Zealand’s primary industry sector.
He obtained a 1 st class Honours degree in Statistics at Massey University in
2016 before embarking on a PhD at the University of Otago in conjunction with
AgResearch (one of New Zealand’s government owned research institutes)
developing statistical methods to account for errors in the analysis of high-
throughput sequencing data. He then was employed as a Post-Doctoral
Scientist at AgResearch to provide statistical analysis of microbiome data from
rumens of livestock before recently starting a consulting Statistician role within
the company. Until recently, Timothy was the Otago representative of the
NZSA student and early career network.