SSA ACT branch invites everyone to attend our final meeting for 2024 calendar year, the inaugural Wilson Lecture. The lecture is in honour of the late Professor Sue Wilson and her immense contributions to the statistics and bioinformatics community across Canberra, Australia, and globally. The Wilson lecture will be run as the branch's final lecture every second year, alternating with the Knibbs lecture.

Date: Monday 2 December 2024

Time: Starts 5:45pm and finishes by 7:15pm    

Venue: Haydon Allen Building HAG040, ANU (https://studentvip.com.au/anu/main/maps/142179), or via Zoom <https://anu.zoom.us/j/83946471457?pwd=bA9UC5VaOeaogA8xDEEkKZtAHPaqUH.1>

Speaker: Gillian Heller, Professor of Biostatistics at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney.

Topic: Back to the future, or "Model what you measure"

Abstract: The evolution of statistical modelling has historically been constrained by the practical limitations of computation. As increased mathematical complexity often implies more intricate computation, over time statistical models have grown both mathematically and computationally more complex; but paradoxically sometimes conceptually simpler models present more computational challenges than complex ones. I shall be discussing two well-known examples of this phenomenon.

Biography: Gillian Heller is Professor of Biostatistics at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney. After completing her studies at the University of Cape Town, Gillian migrated to Australia, where she has held academic positions at the University of New South Wales, Macquarie University, and the University of Sydney. She is past chair of the Biostatistics Collaboration of Australia, past Head of the Department of Statistics at Macquarie University, Honorary Professor, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University, and Honorary Member of the Statistical Modelling Society. Gillian’s research interests lie in distributional regression and biostatistics, in which she has published widely. She is co-author of four books, the first of which is on the topic of generalized linear modelling in the context of insurance, and the next three on the methodology and applications of distributional regression. She collaborates widely with colleagues in the UK and Europe. In her position at the Clinical Trials Centre, Gillian works closely with clinicians and other medical professionals, in a consulting role.

Dinner: After the talk we will be holding a dinner at Amara Indian Restaurant, The Melbourne Building, 51-53 Northbourne Avenue, Canberra City (Amara Indian Restaurant).

If you are interested in attending the dinner, please let me know by 6pm Friday 29 November by entering your details at SSA ACT Branch dinner attendance sheet, or contacting me (warren.muller@csiro.au; 0407 916 868). Please regard this as a firm commitment, not just an intention. For withdrawals after the deadline, please remove your name from the sheet and phone or text me (0407 916 868).

NOTE: We are offering discounts to SSA early career and student members who attend dinner! For this meeting, dinners will be a fixed charge of $10 for student members and $20 for early career members. 

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Full Zoom Details for Wilson lecture:

Topic: SSA ACT Wilson lecture
Time: Dec 2, 2024 05:45 PM Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney

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Meeting ID: 839 4647 1457
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