The Western Australian Branch of the Statistical Society of Australia invites you to a presentation, "Improving precision healthcare for under-represented and genetically diverse global populations" by Dr Jimmy Breen, Chief Data Scientist of the Indigenous Genomics research group at The Kids Research Institute Australia.
Date: Tuesday 9 June 2026
Time: 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM (AWST)
Venue: Robert Street Lecture Theatre, The University of Western Australia
In person only event
Title: Improving precision healthcare for under-represented and genetically diverse global populations
Precision healthcare holds immense potential to transform disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment by tailoring care to an individual’s genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. The majority of genomics research however, has been focused on populations of European ancestry, leaving under-represented and genetically diverse global populations, such as Indigenous Australians, underserved. This gap limits the generalisability of biomedical insights and exacerbates existing health inequities, but also limits the utility of language models that may have a significant impact on the way that genetic variants can be prioritised for drug discovery. In this talk, I describe some of the challenges associated with the analysis of Indigenous Australian genomes and discuss approaches that our team are using to develop precision approaches for primary healthcare in Australia.
Presenter: Associate Professor Jimmy Breen
Associate Professor Jimmy Breen is the Chief Data Scientist of the Indigenous Genomics research group at The Kids Research Institute Australia in Adelaide. His group is the primary curator of multiomics datasets produced in the South Australian Aboriginal Diabetes Study (PROPHECY - Predicting Renal, Ophthalmic, and Heart Events in the Aboriginal Community), a project aimed at assessing the levels of complications in Aboriginal people with Diabetes. He has 20 years of experience working as a Bioinformatician, primarily in Australia and Europe, working on diverse areas such as Plant Genetics, Ancient DNA, Viticulture, Reproductive Biology, Clinical Oncology and Precision Healthcare.
Refreshments and Dinner
Members and visitors are invited to mingle over wine and cheese from 5:30 PM onwards at the venue. Following the meeting, all are invited to dine at a nearby restaurant. Visitors are welcome.
Venue details
The Robert Street Lecture Theatre (RBST[G16]; 272.G16) is located on the ground floor of the Robert Street Building (RBST; 272 General Purpose Building 2) at The University of Western Australia. Its entrance is near the north-eastern corner 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
@StatSocAus
