WOMBAT 2025

Dr Benjamin Harrap (they/them) is a biostatistician by training and has worked with data from all manner of contexts and sources, from clinical trials and observational studies to census and linked administrative data.

They currently work at Yardhura Walani (Ngunnawal for a strong, powerful and healthy energy and place) on Mayi Kuwayu: The National Study of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Wellbeing, providing data management, survey design, and statistical expertise. Recently, Ben’s been using R and Quarto to rework the study’s data management pipeline into something beautiful and functional, and has used this as an opportunity to upskill colleagues interested in learning R.

When Ben’s not thinking about data, which is rare, you can find them posting silly things on Bluesky, cooking up something in the kitchen, or playing whatever games are on their toddler’s agenda.

Cynthia Huang is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics at Monash University. She completed her undergraduate and honours degrees in Economics at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on principles and tools for complex data preparation in the social sciences.

Dean Marchiori is a statistician and founder of Wave Data Labs, an independent data science consulting practice. His areas of specialisation are in time series modelling & anomaly detection, geospatial analytics, unsupervised machine learning and the R programming language. He is currently co-chair of the Statistical Society of Australia’s section for statistical computing and visualisation and chair of the SSA working group for data science accreditation. Dean obtained his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics with University Medal from Charles Sturt University. He also holds a Master of Applied Statistics from Macquarie University where he was awarded the Julian Leslie Prize and served as a sessional teaching academic in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Dean holds the Accredited Statistician (AStat) qualification from the Statistical Society of Australia and was named one of the top 10 analytics professionals in Australia by the Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia (IAPA).

Dianne Cook, a Professor of Statistics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, is a global leader in data visualisation. She has delivered over 100 invited talks internationally and published extensively on various aspects of data visualisation. Dr. Cook is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, past editor of the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, and the R Journal. She has served as a Board Member of the R Foundation and is currently the co-chair of the Statistical Computing and Visualisation Section of the Statistical Society of Australia.

Floyd Everest is a PhD candidate in the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics at Monash. His research focuses on auditing instant-runoff voting elections. This led him to develop the R package 'prefio' for intuitive data manipulation when working with preferential voting datasets.

Harriet Mason is a final year PhD student. She is researching how uncertainty can be effectively communicated through statistical graphics, particularly in contexts where misleading interpretations must be actively avoided. She is the author of several R packages, including cassowaryr and ggdibbler.

James is a Data Engineer with CounterCurrent, a UNSW startup that is helping the shipping industry decarbonise with better routes through the ocean. James has spent the last five years helping to make graphics and data vis tools more open, working as a data journalist at 360info and a knowledge broker with the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. James has a PhD from UNSW Sydney looking at the health impacts of future heatwaves.

Jayani Lakshika is a final-year PhD student in Statistics at Monash University. Her research focuses on developing interactive visual tools and statistical methodologies for selecting and evaluating non-linear dimension reduction layouts of high-dimensional data. She is the author of several R packages. Jayani is a member of R-Ladies Melbourne and is passionate about teaching, with extensive experience tutoring statistics and data science courses, and mentoring students in both Australia and Sri Lanka. In addition to her academic work, she brings industry experience as a data analyst.

Jenny Richmond is a developmental psychologist by training and has been teaching people how to code in R since 2018. She is one of the co-founders of R-Ladies Sydney and developed #RYouWithMe, a set of learning modules “for beginners, by beginners”, which that have helped more than 40000 new learners get started with data wrangling, visualization, and reproducible reporting in R. She is particularly interested in the role of self-regulation, emotion, and metacognition in student learning, success and wellbeing.

Dr Jess Hopf is an active conservation science researcher and founder of Knowlegible Designs, where she helps researchers translate complex science into clear, compelling visuals.

Krisanat Anukarnsakulchularp is a first-year PhD student in Statistics at Monash University, where his research centers around network analysis, developing graph data structures to help better understand and explore the spatio-temporal multivariate network data. He is the author of the R package animbook, for visualizing changes in performance measures and demographic affiliations using animation. Krisanat is working at Monash University as a teaching associate for the Master of Business Analytics program.

Dr Michael Lydeamore is a Senior Lecturer in Business Analytics at Monash University. A statistician and infectious disease modeller, Michael develops and applies methods ranging from regression and machine learning to large-scale mathematical modelling. Their research spans COVID-19 dynamics, antimicrobial resistance in hospitals, and quantitative approaches to health policy. They are an active advocate for open-source and reproducible research, sharing tools, code, and datasets with the wider analytics community, including VSCode extensions, Quarto templates, R packages, and GitHub actions.

Mitchell O’Hara-Wild (he/him) is a PhD candidate at Monash University, creating new techniques and tools for forecasting large collections of time series with Rob Hyndman and George Athanasopoulos. He is the lead developer of the tidy time-series forecasting tools fable and feasts, and has co-developed the widely used forecast package since 2015. He is an award-winning educator, and has taught applied forecasting at Monash University and various forecasting workshops around the world.

Dr. Nicholas (Nick) Tierney is a Research Software Engineer, and freelance consultant with a PhD in Statistics who specialises in data analytics, R package development, and teaching. He wrote his first R package in 2015, neato, after being inspired by Dr. Hilary Parker's blog post "writing an R package from scratch".

His academic work has produced several widely-used packages (see his github). During his research fellowship at Monash University with Professor Dianne Cook, he developed tools for exploratory data analysis including visdat, naniar, and brolgar . He then went on to work with Professor Nick Golding at The Kids Research Institute Australia, working as a research software engineer to translate research methods into R packages. Specifically, conmat a tool used in pandemic modelling, and he maintained Nick Golding's greta R package for statistical modelling using Google's tensorflow.

Beyond coding, Nick actively writes about R related projects at his blog, "credibly curious". When not coding, Nick enjoys outdoor adventures and hiked the entire Pacific Crest Trail in 2023, documenting his journey at njt.micro.blog.

Nicola Rennie is a data visualisation specialist, working at the Office for National Statistics in the United Kingdom. She has a background in statistics and data science, who is interested in understanding how to effectively communicate quantitative information in an accessible way. She advocates for using open source tools, and has experience in D3, Svelte, R, and Python. Nicola co-authored the Royal Statistical Society’s Best Practices for Data Visualisation guidance and is a member of the Editorial Board of Significance magazine, particularly focused on data visualisation. Nicola is a committee member and secretary of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) Teaching Statistics Section Group, and is also one of the RSS’s 2024-2025 William Guy Lecturers who has recorded and delivered talks aimed at 11-16 year olds on the topic of using data and statistics to shape decision making in medicine and healthcare. She has also previously been a committee member of the R-Ladies Global Team and the R-Ladies Lancaster chapter organiser.

Rob J Hyndman FAA FASSA is a Professor of Statistics in the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics at Monash University, and an elected Fellow of both the Australian Academy of Science and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. He is the author of over 200 research papers and 5 books in statistical science. In 2007, he received the Moran medal from the Australian Academy of Science for his contributions to statistical research, especially in the area of statistical forecasting. In 2021, he received the Pitman medal from the Statistical Society of Australia. For over 30 years, Rob has maintained an active consulting practice, assisting hundreds of companies and organizations around the world. He has won awards for his research, teaching, consulting and graduate supervision.

Dr Saras Windecker is a Senior Research Officer at The Kids Research Institute Australia working in infectious disease modelling and software development. Dr Windecker is a member of the Australia-Aotearoa Consortium for Epidemic Forecasting & Analytics (ACEFA), which aims to support timely and effective responses to epidemic diseases in Australia and New Zealand. She is actively involved in the open research community and interested in promoting reproducible research practices.

Tomasz Woźniak is a Bayesian econometrician developing new econometric methods for applied macroeconomic research. He has been a specialised R user for seventeen years, and has recently joined The R Journal as an Associate Editor. He is the author of several R packages, available at https://bsvars.org/, that combine blazingly fast algorithms written in C++ with the convenience of data analysis in R. He works as a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, where he has an extensive research, teaching, and engagement portfolio. He is also an external collaborator at the International Labour Organization, where he develops a new forecasting system and an R package.

Tyler Reysenbach is a policy adviser and researcher focused on the intersection of data analysis and policy implementation.

She began her career at the Productivity Commission working on evaluation frameworks for programs affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet as a data analyst, producing briefings on vaccination rollout and border policies for the Prime Minister.

As a Research Associate at the Grattan Institute, Tyler led data analysis for the migration policy team, using datasets including PLIDA to examine visa pathways and migrant outcomes. This research informed multiple recommendations that were incorporated into the Australian Government's Migration Strategy.

Tyler then moved to the Office of the Minister for Home Affairs as an Adviser, leading implementation of the Migration Strategy and managing policy development across innovation visas, the points-test, and working holiday maker visas.

She holds First Class Honours in Economics from the University of Western Australia.