Methods and Implementation Support for Clinical and Health research Hub

Professor Julie Simpson

Director of MISCH

Julie has 30 years experience as a biostatistician contributing to clinical and population health research. Previously she has worked at St Thomas's Hospital, London, Mahidol-Oxford Research Programme in Thailand, University of Aberdeen, and Cancer Council of Victoria. Her main research areas are: the integration of biostatistics and mathematical modelling to improve the control of infectious diseases and statistical methods for handling missing data in observational cohorts.  Julie is Head of the Biostatistics Unit, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, and was awarded an NHMRC Investigator Grant (Leadership L1, 2021-5).

Professor Julie Simpson

Director of MISCH

Julie has 30 years experience as a biostatistician contributing to clinical and population health research. Previously she has worked at St Thomas's Hospital, London, Mahidol-Oxford Research Programme in Thailand, University of Aberdeen, and Cancer Council of Victoria. Her main research areas are: the integration of biostatistics and mathematical modelling to improve the control of infectious diseases and statistical methods for handling missing data in observational cohorts.  Julie is Head of the Biostatistics Unit, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, and was awarded an NHMRC Investigator Grant (Leadership L1, 2021-5).

Associate Professor Sabine Braat

Co-Head of MISCH Biostatistics

Sabine completed her postgraduate training in Belgium (Master of Science in Biostatistics preceded by Master in Applied Mathematics) following undergraduate study in mathematics. She has over 15 years’ experience working as a statistician in the pharmaceutical industry in the Netherlands where she contributed to the design, analysis and reporting of clinical trials ranging from the early clinical phases (Phase II) to post-marketing (Phase IV) in a range of medical areas.

Associate Professor Karen Lamb

Co-Head of MISCH Biostatistics

Karen has a BSc (Hons) in Statistics from the University of Glasgow, Scotland and a PhD in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland where her research focused on the mathematical and statistical modelling of pneumococcal carriage following vaccine intervention. Karen has been employed as a biostatistician in public health research for more than 10 years. She has previously worked at the MRC Social & Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne and the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition at Deakin University in Melbourne. She has experience providing statistical support in the design, analysis and reporting of observational studies, quasi-experimental studies and randomised controlled trials.

Professor Mark Jenkins

Mark is a Group leader in the Centre for Cancer Research. He is an epidemiologist with 20 years' experience in the design, conduct, and analysis of studies examining the role of genetic and environmental causes of cancer, and the prevention and early detection of colorectal cancer, including research on the increase in screening participation.

Associate Professor Emily Karahalios

Emily completed her Honours Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto, Canada, and Master of Public Health and PhD in Epidemiology & Biostatistics from the University of Melbourne. Emily is a Senior Lecturer in Biostatistics in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, the University of Melbourne and is the coordinator for the Master of Biostatistics and Deputy Head of the Biostatistics Unit. Emily’s expertise is in the statistical methods for systematic reviews (i.e. pairwise and network meta-analysis). She is a member of Cochrane and statistical editor for the Cochrane Incontinence Group. She has previously worked in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, as clinical biostatistician at Western Health, and at Cancer Council of Victoria.

Dr Anurika de Silva

Anurika has a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Statistics (Hons) from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka and a PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her PhD involved the evaluation of multiple imputation methods for handling missing longitudinal data. She has worked in public health research for 2 years and her expertise is in the statistical analyses of randomised controlled trials and observational studies. She is also currently the course coordinator for the Master of Public Health course on Linear and Logistic Regression. Previously, she has worked as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Dr Digsu Koye

Digsu has a Bachelor of Science in Public Health and Master of Public Health in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of Gondar, Ethiopia and PhD in Epidemiology from Monash University, Australia. He is an experienced clinical epidemiologist with a strong biostatistical background in the design and analysis of clinical and epidemiological studies in the fields of metabolic and chronic diseases. Before his move to Australia for his PhD, Digsu had been teaching and conducting public health research at the Institute of Public Health of the University of Gondar.

Ms Vanessa Pac Soo

Vanessa is a Research Fellow in Biostatistics. She completed a Bachelor of Business from Monash University and Master of Statistics and Operations Research from RMIT University. She also recently completed her Master of Biostatistics at the University of Melbourne. At MISCH, she contributes biostatistical expertise to the design, analysis and reporting of randomised trials and observational studies. Prior to joining the University of Melbourne, Vanessa worked as a data analyst and public health officer.

Dr Rob Mahar

Rob received a PhD in Biostatistics at the University of Melbourne in 2019 following his completion of a Master of Biostatistics at the University of Queensland in 2014. He is a statistician with a research focus on applied Bayesian methods, and novel experimental design and analysis, particularly for adaptive clinical trials and sequentially multiple assignment randomised trials. His doctoral research focused on developing new models of lung function from multiple-breath washout and complex tidal flow waveform data, with an emphasis on computational Bayesian and spectral analytical methods. Prior to undertaking his graduate studies, he was a professional economist with a focus on both domestic and international housing and retail markets.

Professor Leonid Churilov

Biostatistics Lead at Austin Hospital

Leonid is an internationally recognized expert in the use of health analytics and statistical modelling for decision support in clinical and health care systems. He is an Associate Editor of the “Operations Research for Health Care” and an Editorial Board member for four other journals. He contributes biostatistical, health analytics, and decision modelling expertise to several large international clinical trials and to a number of smaller pre-clinical, clinical, imaging, and service evaluation studies in the areas of general neurology, stroke, epilepsy, spinal cord injury, diabetes, gynaecology, and anaesthesia.

Dr Alistair McLean

Alistair is a Research Fellow in Biostatistics. He completed his PhD in malaria immuno-epidemiology at the University of Melbourne in 2016. He has experience providing statistical support and training in the design, analysis, interpretation and reporting of observational studies and randomised controlled trials. Prior to joining MISCH, Alistair worked as a biostatistician at the Myanmar Oxford Clinical Research Unit and as a postdoctoral research scientist with the Infectious Diseases Data Observatory, University of Oxford.

Dr Hannah Johns

Hannah is a Biostatistician with an interest in novel statistical methods and trial designs for the study, analysis and delivery of stroke care. She is a recognised expert in the use of statistical and machine learning, and regularly provides statistical and technical support to a range of clinical projects, and is responsible for the implementation of adaptive randomisation procedures in several stroke trials. Hannah is a current member of the executive of the Australasian Stroke Trials Network and has developed and contributed statistical software to the Comprehensive R Archive Network.

Mr Dominic Italiano

Dominic is a Research Fellow in Biostatistics who joined Melbourne Brain Centre at Royal Melbourne Hospital in September 2021. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Statistics (2017) and Master of Biostatistics (2021) from the University of Melbourne. Dom is involved in collaborative clinical research projects across Melbourne Medical School through providing statistical and methodological support. He works closely with clinical researchers and contributes to the communication of research findings via scientific publications.

Dr Sophie Zaloumis

Sophie has a BSc (Hon) in Statistics and a PhD in Statistics from the University of Melbourne. Her PhD project focused on Bayesian hierarchical modelling and extending statistical methods to analyse ordinal categorical family data. Sophie has been employed as a biostatistician in public health research for more than 10 years. She has experience providing statistical support in the analysis and reporting of observational studies, pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modelling and applying Bayesian inference approaches.

Ms Fiona McManus

Fiona McManus is a Research Assistant in Biostatistics at the University of Melbourne. She worked for several years as a physiotherapist in various public and private settings and as a physiotherapy research assistant at the Centre for Health, Exercise and Sports Medicine (CHESM), Department of Physiotherapy, Melbourne School of Health Sciences. Fiona completed a Master of Public Health (Epidemiology and Biostatistics stream) in 2015 and a Master of Biostatistics in 2020. She joined the Biostatistics node of the Methods and Implementation Support for Clinical and Health research hub in 2021, where she works on collaborative research projects, including randomised controlled trials, with Professor Kim Bennell and her team at CHESM.

Ms Diana Zannino

Diana is a biostatistician with over 15 years’ experience working across many fields in clinical research. She completed a Master of Science by Research in Applied Statistics at the University of Melbourne and started her biostatistics career at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney. Upon returning to Melbourne, she worked in the biostatistics unit at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and then later joined the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute to provide statistical support to the Heart Research Team.

Ms Peixuan Li

Peixuan is a Research Assistant in Biostatistics. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience (2020) and a Master of Biostatistics (2022) from the University of Melbourne. Peixuan completed her Master of Biostatistics Research Project at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, focusing on investigating inflammation and metabolic risk profiles in the social gradient of cardiovascular disease in Australian children. Since joining MISCH in 2022, Peixuan has been actively involved in a range of collaborative clinical research projects, providing statistical support to observational studies and randomised controlled trials.

Ms Ximena Camacho

Ximena has extensive experience using linked health administrative databases to generate policy-relevant evidence. She has worked across a variety of fields including cancer, aging and cardiovascular studies, and her current work is focused on using real-world data to assess medicines safety. Ximena collaborates regularly with clinical, government and academic partners and has both local and international networks. She has held former roles with the Centre for Digital Transformation of Health (University of Melbourne) and Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (Canada’s largest independent steward of linked population health data).

Associate Professor Patty Chondros

Patty is a biostatistician specialising in primary care and health services research. She is the lead biostatistician within Primary Clinical Trials Unit based at the Department of General Practice. As lead biostatistician she provides statistical leadership and expertise to support the department’s research programs, including grants and publications, and to advance the methodological and statistical skills and capacity of researchers and research higher degree students. Her research interests include the design and analysis of randomised controlled trials, particularly cluster randomised and stepped wedge designs.

Professor Douglas Iain Ross Boyle

Dougie is the Director of the Research Information Technology Unit (R2). Since 2006 Doug has been researching, developing and implementing systems for the ethical acquisition of record-linkable data for audit, research and health surveillance. Consent management, security and privacy-protecting record linkage are key components and research areas. The software systems (GRHANITE™) are now responsible for the largest collections of record-linkable primary care data ever accumulated in Australia. Prior to emigrating from Scotland in 2006, Doug worked in a similar capacity to develop and implement technologies for wide-scale data acquisition. His system SCI-DC Network is internationally recognised and is playing a continuing key role in the support of population-based diabetes health service provision across Scotland.

Mr David Ormiston-Smith

David provides Health Informatics expertise to MISCH. David has experience with Natural Language Technologies (Python, web, data-mining, nlp) and supports REDCap users.

Dr Adam Deane

Adam is an Intensivist with research interests including pragmatic clinical trials and outcomes from critical illness. He currently serves as Senior Staff Specialist, Head of Intensive Care Unit Research, and Deputy Director Intensive Care Unit at The Royal Melbourne Hospital. Adam currently holds a Career Development Fellowship (Level 2 clinical) with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

Ms Katie Ozdowska

Katie is the MISCH Clinical Trials Node Manager. She has experience in the coordination and conduct of all phases of investigator-initiated and sponsored clinical trials and medical research projects. Katie previously worked in the University of Melbourne’s Department of Otolaryngology and was responsible for the coordination of trials investigating drug delivery, gene therapy and regenerative strategies for the protection and restoration of hearing. She was also involved in multiple trials related to Indigenous ear health. Katie holds a Bachelor degree in Nursing Science from the University of Southern Queensland and a Master’s degree in Public Health & Tropical Medicine from James Cook University.