The Western Australian Branch of the Statistical Society of Australia is delighted to host an evening dedicated to Early Career and Student Statisticians. All visitors are welcome to attend this event, especially anyone studying or interested in pursuing a career in statistics or data science.
Two speakers have been invited to speak at this event: Aaron Gibson-John, 2025 Honours Scholarship winner, and Daisy Evans, 2025 EJG Pitman Prize winner.
Date: Tuesday 12 May 2026
Time: 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM (AWST)
Venue: Blakers Lecture Theatre, The University of Western Australia
In person only event
Cost: This event is free, but for catering purposes, please register. Drinks and pizza sponsored by the Branch.
Speakers - Bios and Abstracts:
Aaron Gibson-John
Aaron Gibson-John is a PhD candidate in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at UNSW, where he is undertaking an industry-linked project with Memjet. His research focuses on applying statistical learning and machine learning methods to manufacturing data to support earlier detection of production issues and improved decision-making. He previously completed a Bachelor of Philosophy (Honours) in Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Western Australia.
Title: Machine Learning for Printhead Health Prediction
Modern printhead manufacturing generates large amounts of process and test data across multiple production stages. My PhD research investigates how statistical modelling and machine learning can be used to better understand this data and to identify patterns associated with printhead health and production outcomes. The project is being conducted in collaboration with Memjet and focuses on developing methods that may support earlier detection of issues, improved process insight, and more informed decision-making in manufacturing. In this presentation, I will also briefly reflect on my honours project and on how the SSA WA Branch Honours Scholarship supported my transition into PhD research.
Daisy Evans
Daisy is in the first year of her PhD studying hidden Markov modelling for ion channel patch clamp recordings at the University of Western Australia. She also works part time as a research data analyst at The Kids Research Institute Australia in the Perioperative Medicine Team, where she assists in planning and undertaking statistical analyses of clinical trials data for studies in paediatric anaesthesia safety and optimisation. Daisy has background in physics, but transitioned to statistics after discovering a love for data analysis during projects in radio astronomy and health data.
Title: Investigation of Statistical Models for Mechanosensitive Ion Channel Gating
Ion channels are protein molecules found in cell membranes which open and close to allow ions to flow into or out of the cell. Found in the cells of all living things, ion channels are classified by the stimulus that triggers their gating; here we focus on mechanosensitive ion channels, which are triggered by mechanical stimulus. Mechanosensitive ion channels perform an enormous variety of processes, from regulating intra-cellular pressure, to controlling heart function and bone development, to mediating the senses of touch and hearing through the transformation of mechanical force into electrical signals via ionic current flow. Ion channel current flow is measured through patch-clamp recordings, where the channel is triggered to open and close and the resulting current flow is amplified, filtered and digitised. Such stochastic measurements can be modelled as hidden Markov models. Appropriate modelling can help researchers characterise ion channels such as the number of open and closed conformational states the protein can take. This presentation will summarise the history of development of hidden Markov models for ion channel patch-clamp recordings. Areas for improvement of such models will be detailed, for example more appropriately encapsulation of the transition between continuous-time channel gating and discrete-time measurements, and better specification of noise standard deviation in models for channels with multiple sub-conducting states.
Refreshments and Dinner
Members, visitors, and guests are invited to mingle over wine, beer, cider, soft drinks and pizza from 5:30 PM. Following the meeting, you are invited to dine with fellow attendees at a nearby restaurant. Early career and students will receive $20 off their meals.
Venue details
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 18, accessible from Fairway Entry 1.
For further information please contact the WA Branch Secretary: ssa.wa.secretary@gmail.com
@StatSocAus
