The first meeting for 2026 is the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the WA Branch of the Statistical Society of Australia.

Date: Tuesday, 10 March 2026

Time (AGM): 5:15 PM to 6:00 PM (AWST)

Time (Presentation): 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM (AWST)

Location: Blakers Lecture Theatre, The University of Western Australia.

Non-members of the SSA WA Branch are welcome at the AGM but cannot vote on Branch matters. Following the AGM, Professor Ben Phillips from Curtin University will give a presentation.

Annual General Meeting

The AGM agenda, proxy forms, and other relevant documents are emailed to members directly. Please contact the WA Branch Secretary if you have not received these by the Monday preceding the AGM.

The election of the 2026 WA Branch Council will occur at the AGM.

The AGM will not be streamed or video recorded.

PRESENTATION

Process, Inference, and Toads

Professor Ben Phillips, Curtin University.

This talk will take a short stroll through some of the fascinating processes that play out during biological invasions. After that, we will step through several vignettes in which inference from process-based models has been useful in drawing valuable insight from messy ecological data. The talk will feature a host of characters, from poison arrow frogs, to dusty wallabies, tumours, toads, bees, and a bloke named Fisher.

About the Speaker

Ben is a Professor at Curtin University’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences. He is a population biologist with a background in ecology and evolution, and is particularly interested in how spatial processes influence population and evolutionary dynamics. Ben started his professional life as a field biologist, but has slowly morphed into a modeler. He develops models describing population and evolutionary dynamics, and increasingly applies these to real problems in agriculture, health, and environment.

Ben moved to Curtin in 2023 to take up the WA Premier’s Science Fellowship. Prior to that, he worked at The University of Melbourne for nine years where he was promoted to Professor in 2021. He has also worked at James Cook University, The Australian Wildlife Conservancy, and The University of Sydney in various roles prior to this. Ben has held a Future Fellowship, a QEII Fellowship, and an Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Refreshments and Dinner

Members and visitors are invited to mingle over wine and cheese from 5:00 PM onwards at the venue. Following the meeting all are invited to dine at a nearby restaurant. Visitors are welcome.

Meeting Directions

The Blakers Lecture Theatre is located on the ground floor of the Mathematics building at The University of Western Australia. Its entrance is on the northern side of the building. See: UWA Maps, Google Maps.

Parking is free on the UWA Crawley campus after 5:00 PM. A convenient place to park is Car Park 51 accessible from Fairway Entrance 1.

For further information please contact the WA Branch Secretary (ssa.wa.secretary@gmail.com).