Speaker list

Doug Wolfe

Professor Emeritus Statistics at Ohio State University

Doug Wolfe is a Professor and Chair Emeritus in the Department of Statistics, The Ohio State University, USA. Prof Wolfe is a member of the International Statistical Institute and a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Statistical Association, and is the past Chair of the Nonparametric Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association. Over his exciting academic career of almost 50 years, Prof Wolfe has published more than 100 research papers, graduated 5 MSc and 26 PhD students, and is a co-author of five statistical texts. His research publications appear in Biometrika, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Statistica Neerlandica, Journal of Nonparametric Statistics, Biometrics, Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, Journal of Agriculture and Biological Statistics and others. Prof Wolfe served as an associate editor for The American Statistician (1974 – 79) and the Journal of the American Statistical Association (1991 – 96).

Omer Ozturk

Professor of Statistics at Ohio State University

Omer Ozturk is a Professor of Statistics in the Department of Statistics at The Ohio State University. His research interest in statistics lies in developing inference under a set of relaxed distributional assumptions that may include parametric, nonparametric and robust inference under different sampling conditions.
He currently serves as an associate editor for Environmental and Ecological Statistics, Statistics and Probability Letters, Communications in Statistics: Case Studies, Data Analysis and Applications, Simulation and Computation, and Theory and Methods.
He is frequently invited to US Census Bureau as a Summer at Census Scholar. He is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Jennifer Brown

Professor of Statistics at the University of Canterbury

Professor Jennifer Brown is an applied statistician at the University of Canterbury. Jennifer is currently the Head of School of Mathematics and Statistics, and is the past president of the New Zealand Statistical Association. She is currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics, the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics, Environmental and Ecological Statistics, the International Journal of Ecological Economics & Statistics, the Journal of Methodological and Applied Statistics, the Journal of the Indian Society of Agricultural Statistics, the International Journal of Mathematics and Statistics, and the Journal of Biowar and Defence.
Jennifer’s research interests are in environmental statistics and she has specialised in adaptive sampling designs. Her background is in both ecology and statistics, underlying her involvement in designing long term monitoring surveys in New Zealand, USA, France and Qatar.
Professor Brown has published about 100 research papers in Biometrics, Population Ecology, Environmental and Ecological Statistics, and others.

Amer Ibrahim Al-Omari

Professor of Statistics at Al al-Bayt University

Professor Amer Al-Omari is a Professor of Statistics and Vice Dean of Academic Research in Al al-Bayt University, Jordan. Amer graduated in 2007 with a PhD in multistage ranked set sampling, and seen has published about 100 research papers in statistics, He has recently published with Elsevier a text (co-authored with Bouza) on Ranked Set Sampling. [Al-Omari, A.I., and Bouza, C.N. (2018). Ranked Set Sampling, Elsevier]. Prof Al-Omari has an extensive and expressive experience in mathematical and statistical education at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and graduated three MSc research students. Prof Al-Omari is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and a member of the Union of Arab Statisticians. He is an associate editor for the Journal of Applied Probability and Statistics and on editorial boards for the Electronic Journal of Applied Statistical Analysis, Revista Investigacin Operacional and International Journal of Algebra and Statistics. Prof Al-Omari’s research interests are in statistical sampling, statistical quality control and applied statistics.

Olena Kravchuk

Senior Lecturer in Biometry and Head of the Biometry Hub at the University of Adelaide

Dr Olena Kravchuk is a teaching and research academic in the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, Waite Campus, University of Adelaide, where she is leading a research and consulting statistics group, The Biometry Hub. Olena’s range of qualifications include Masters of Engineering (Automative Control Systems), Masters of Applied Mathematics and PhD in Statistics. She is interested in rank methods in application to heavy-tailed and mixture distributions, and in robust statistical methods in general. In 2003 – 2011, Olena established a research program in Food Sensory and Sensometrics in the University of Queensland, and in 2011 – 2018, a research program in Statistics for Agriculture Field Research in the University of Adelaide. She has published 90+ research papers, and two book chapters. Olena collaborates successfully with agriculture industries and life scientists from many fields, translating their research questions and practical constraints in formal statistical settings.

Raymond Correll

Principal Statistician at Rho Environmetrics

Dr Ray Correll started his professional career as a quantitative plant ecologist working in the semi-arid zones of South Australia. He then took a position at James Cook University in Townsville in biology but found he was doing more biology as a statistician than he was as an ecologist. He undertook studies in statistics on a sabbatical leave and was offered a position as a consulting statistician in CSIRO in Adelaide – a position he held for over 30 years. Since retiring from CSIRO he has been consulting as Rho Environmetrics. Ray has a particular interest in sampling and his projects have included quarantine, water quality sampling and monitoring and soil diseases assessment. He has given courses emphasising practical applications, including quarantine, water quality sampling and monitoring and soil diseases assessment.

Richard Jarrett

Professor of Statistics (retired) at the University of Adelaide

Richard Jarrett retired from CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences in 2013, having worked there for 30 years. He was also Professor of Statistics at the University of Adelaide 1990-1999. His main fields of interest are risk analysis, quality improvement and experimental design. Richard has published more than 80 research papers and technical reports.
Currently, he is a senior advisor on a Statistics for the Australian Grains Industry project in the University of Adelaide, providing his expert opinion on the design of complex agricultural experiments and mentoring young biometricians by upskilling them in the design and analysis paradigms.

Myung Hwan Na

Professor of Statistics at Chonnam National University, South Korea

Professor Na graduated with the Bachelor of Science in 1989 from the Department of Mathematics Education, Seoul National University, which followed by M.Sc in 1993 and Ph.D. in 1998 from the Department of Statistics, Seoul National University. From 2003, he has joined the faculty of the Department of Statistics, Chonnam National University. His expertise is majored in the field of Statistical Quality Control (SQC) and Reliability theory. His active research areas are currently SQC, Medical Radiation Safety, Machine learning, Agricultural Big-data analysis and more. Current research applications are in improving the productivity of greenhouse vegetables such as tomato, strawberry, mushroom; these projects are supported by the Rural Development Administration, South Korea.

Andy Timmins

Research Fellow

Andy completed a B.Sc. in biology which was followed by a Ph.D. in crop pest research and a M.Sc. in Computing Science. He spent a year working as “wet-lab” post-doc in the UK before switching careers and working in the I.T. industry as a software analyst / programmer. After several years in this role, Andy moved to Australia and pursue a career as a small-scale organic farmer. After exhausting his interest in farming, he decided to return to research at the University of Adelaide as a bioinformatician. Currently, he still works on bioinformatics projects but his interests have widened to include other areas such as machine learning and high-performance computing.

Rhiannon Schilling

Agricultural Scientist

Rhiannon Schilling is an agricultural scientist at the Waite Research Institute of The University of Adelaide. She obtained a PhD in 2014, which involved the first field trials of genetically modified barley at saline sites in Australia. Between 2014-2016, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow on a GRDC-funded project focused on the development of salt tolerant wheat and barley. Her current research focus is to develop crop varieties with improved tolerance to subsoil constraints. She also uses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to assess the performance of wheat varieties in field trials for The South Australian Grain Industry Trust.

Sharon Nielson

Biometrician

Sharon has been working as a biometrician (consulting statistician) for the past 17 years. She has had the privilege of working in partnership with researchers from many different discipline areas, providing statistical support and advice. During the past six years she has been researching the statistical analysis of NIR spectra – the design and analysis with linear mixed models of NIR spectra has been examined. On top of research she is currently working with SAGI-STH and operating her own statistical consulting business.

Peter Kasprzak

Masters student

Following a winemaking career of 15 years both internationally and domestically, Peter came to statistics in biosciences. After completing a B.Mathematical Sciences (Hons) in the University of Adelaide, he joined the Biometry Hub (a research and consulting group at the Waite campus, University of Adelaide) in 2017 to undertake a M.Philosophy (Biometrics). His research is on feasibility for ranked set sampling in typical modern agronomy trials under different designs. With an interest in computer programming, Peter is also working on developing online tools that facilitate sampling decisions for agronomists. Peter represents Young Statisticians in the Statistical Society of Australia, Southern branch, and is a member of the Research Committee of the Waite Research Institute. He is tutoring undergraduate and postgraduate statistics courses and supervises undergraduate research projects and internship in the Biometry Hub.