It’s on! Registrations are now open for Science meets Parliament 2022 – with a truly stellar program. Global science superstar Brian Cox will headline the event in conversation with another scicomm superstar, Wiradjuri astrophysicist Kirsten Banks. We will have further announcements in coming weeks about more of the superb sessions and brilliant speakers ahead. Book now to secure the early bird rate – only available until December 20.

STA has unveiled the science and technology sector’s 2022 election priorities. Setting the policy agenda, this blueprint was the product of STA’s annual Presidents and CEOs leadership dialogue. We’ve highlighted our push for deeper investment in R&D and a new Research Translation Fund in my comments in widespread media coverage. STA President Jeremy Brownlie also noted in the Australian Financial Review that deeper R&D investments are needed to enable science and technology to drive Australia’s climate transition.
 
We were honoured to give evidence to the Senate inquiry on manufacturing last week, noting STA’s proposals for a Research Translation Fund, bench-to-boardroom scientists, and extending the patent box to clean energy technologies. STA Policy Chair Sharath Sriram joined our President and me to give testimony. We were delighted to see Sharath recognised as a finalist for the AFR’s emerging leaders in higher education award – check out his opinion piece here. We also welcomed this week’s announcement of $111 million in quantum technologies.

This is our last STA Member Update before Jeremy Brownlie hands the STA Presidency to Mark Hutchinson. On behalf of the whole STA community, we thank Jeremy for his tireless leadership of this organisation and the sector – and his remarkable 11 years of service on STA’s Board. We have been blessed to have a leader of his vision, skill, kindness and grace in the Presidency in the extraordinary years of a global pandemic. We will have more to say on this at the AGM.

Finally, if you haven’t already, please register ASAP to attend the virtual AGM – or register a delegate to represent your organisation. We need a strong turnout to ensure quorum. 

Until next time, 

Misha Schubert 
CEO, Science & Technology Australia 

The SSA Environmental Statistics section proudly announces a new annual student prize for best student paper in environmental statistics.  To be eligible a student must be:

• An author of a paper that has been accepted in the previous 12 months, having made a substantial contribution to the work
• A student at the end of semester 1 this year (June 30 2021)
• A current member of the SSA and the Environmental Statistics Section

The winner will receive $500 and will be asked to present in an invited session at the next annual stats conference (in 2023). 

Please submit your nominations to eo@statsoc.org.au, with Tjanpi Award submission in the header, by 5 PM ADST Thursday 2 December 2021, including:

Full name, institution

Paper, as one pdf file.

Letter of support from supervisor or other academic at the institution, confirming student status of applicant and describing the student's role in the paper.

 

 

Central Australian landscape dominated by Tjanpi, photo by Sara Winter

Tjanpi is the Pitjantjatjara word for Triodia, a spiny tussock-forming grass that dominates the vegetation across more than 20% of Australia’s land mass.  It is a long-lived plant that makes deep roots and can withstand the hardiest of conditions.  It can grow over decades into characteristic ring formations three metres in diameter.  As a source of food and shelter, Tjanpi is fundamental to life in some of Australia’s most extreme conditions, being central to highly diverse ecosystems dominated by termites and ants, as well as reptiles, birds and small mammals.  It has also been traditionally used by Indigenous people for a range of purposes, including building shelters, making an adhesive resin, basket weaving, fishing and using its seeds as a food source.  

Tjanpi is an analogy for the Environmental Statistics student award – because the development and application of appropriate statistical techniques is fundamental to good environmental research, and our hope is that the recipient of this award will grow over the coming decades to become central to a diverse range of interesting research endeavours!

Are you an early or mid-career statistician looking for support to grow and develop your career? Or, are you a more experienced statistician looking to share your skills and experience with a new generation of statisticians? If either of these sound like you then this program may be for you!

The Statistical Society of Australia is excited to invite you to be a part of the 2022 mentoring program for all members of the Society. We are looking for up to 20 mentor-mentee pairs to take part in the 6-month mentoring program.

Our aim

This program will connect early and mid-career statisticians to experienced mentors to provide them with career guidance and to share their experiences to help them achieve their professional goals.

Mentees

We are looking to recruit early to mid-career statisticians to take part in the mentoring program. To be eligible to participate, you must be either a student or within the first ten years of a career in statistics, a member of the SSA, and be willing to commit to participating in the program over a 6-month period.

Mentors

We are looking to recruit mentors who have at least five years’ experience working as a statistician. Note that mentors will be paired with mentees with less experience working in statistics (i.e., those with less than five years’ experience will not be paired with mentees with more than five years’ experience). To be eligible to participate, you must be a member of the SSA and be willing to commit to participating in the program over a 6-month period. Prior mentorship experience would be beneficial but is not a requirement for participation.

Program details

The SSA Mentoring Committee will match mentors to mentees and contact the mentee to seek approval to introduce them to the proposed mentor. Each mentor will only be assigned one mentee. Mentees are responsible for arranging the initial meeting and establishing ongoing meetings with their mentor. Ideally, mentors and mentees should aim to meet at least monthly for one hour during the program, with a minimum of four meetings over six months. There is no requirement that mentors and mentees live in the same city; meetings do not have to be face-to-face and may be held via phone or Zoom as necessary. A member of the Mentoring Committee will be in touch throughout the program to learn how things are progressing and to help resolve any issues that arise. There is no expectation that the relationship continue beyond the 6-month program. However, we would be delighted if mentor-mentee pairs continue to keep in touch!

In addition to the paired mentoring, mentees and mentors will have access mentor/mentee training, to be held virtually in February prior to the program’s commencement, and be given the opportunity to participate in a peer mentoring group of up to five participants to share experiences and build greater connections within the SSA community.

Further details about the program will be provided before the program commences.

Interested?

To register your interest in participating in the mentoring program, please complete the form by Sunday 12^th December:  Successful applicants will be notified by the 31^st January 2022, with training via Zoom between 11am and 3pm AEDT on the 23^rd and 24^th of February. The program will run from March to August 2022.

If you have any questions about the mentoring program, please email Karen Lamb, SSA Mentoring Program Committee Chair.

Dear Marie-Louise, What an inspiration. Seeing the profound contributions to humanity made by the winners of the 2021 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science was cause for such pride. How fitting to see the top prize go to evolutionary biologist Professor Eddie Holmes - the Sydney University scientist who shared the genome sequence of the COVID-19 virus freely online so the world could develop tests and vaccines. It was a game changing moment in the pandemic. The eyes of the world have been on the COP26 climate summit this week. "It will be our scientists, our technologists, our engineers, our entrepreneurs, our industrialists and our financiers that will actually chart the path to net zero - and it is up to us as leaders of government to back them in,” the Prime Minister told the gathering. Science & Technology Australia is about to release our STEM sector election priorities statement. This major piece of work will frame our shared advocacy heading into an election year. Thanks to all who joined the leadership dialogue at STA’s annual President and CEO Forum to shape the framework. We are pleased to announce a webinar for STA members to deepen your knowledge of intellectual property. Presented by staff from IP Australia, the session will be a practical guide to understanding IP rights and how to secure them. At the event registration page you can also shape the content of this session by choosing the top topics you want the presenters to cover in detail.   We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible online for the 2021 STA AGM on November 25. The meeting notice and agenda went out yesterday. Please register now if you are the delegate for your member organisation. Until next time,  Misha Schubert  CEO, Science & Technology Australia  NEW REPORTS AND POLICY CHANGES OF INTEREST TO STA MEMBERS Reports of interest: All eyes were on Glasgow and COP26 this week. The Australian Government released The Australian Way, its plan to meet net zero by 2050. It also released the 2021 Low Emissions Technology statement and a National Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy.  The PM’s address to the summit highlighted the key role of scientists, technologists and engineers to meet the goal of net zero emissions by 2050.  CSIRO released a report examining the need for critical metals in the energy transition.  STA CEO Misha Schubert chaired a National Press Club address by climate scientists Professor Mark Howden, Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, and economist Professor Frank Jotzo. Australia’s Chief Scientist Dr Cathy Foley signed a joint statement with global counterparts calling for climate change action and highlighting science and technology’s role in transition.  The Grattan Institute released its take on The Australian Way. The Royal Australian College of Physicians called on the Australian Government to act on climate change on human health, after an MJA–Lancet Countdown paper on health and climate change.   The Australian Academy of Science launched a Climate Change Hub – a repository of scientific and policy content covering all aspects of climate science. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute called for sovereign capacity in quantum science. The Environment Minister announced new Great Barrier Reef protections on live coral harvesting.  The Invasive Species Council released a report on The Native Plant Communities of Norfolk Island. The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists announced a new Chair, Dr Ian Pollard, AM.  The Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences announced 26 new Fellows.   Opportunities for submissions: The Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources and the Clean Energy Regulator are conducting consultations under the Emissions Reduction Fund: Biomethane method package - submissions close 30 November. Blue Carbon method - submissions close 10 November. Plantation forestry method - submissions close 22 November. The Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences wants to better enable research to be conducted in the health system. Contribute through the online survey or make a submission. Further information: STA Director of Policy and Advocacy Sarah Tynan - sarah.tynan@sta.org.au

Congratulations to Bob Xia and Sarthak Das

The Australian Pharmaceutical Biostatistics Group (APBG) are pleased to announce the winners of the APBG Statistics and Data Science Collaboration scholarship. We would like to congratulate Bob Xia (Statistician) and Sarthak Das (Data Scientist) for being selected for this award. Thank you also to all the candidates for their applications, which were of a very high standard.

Bob and Sarthak will work together on a large simulated dataset provided by the APBG to find an algorithm that best fits the data. They will explore the different approaches biostatisticians and data scientists have of answering important clinical questions. We look forward to hearing from them at an upcoming APBG meeting. 

This scholarship opportunity was provided by APBG, in partnership with the SSA.  The Australian Pharmaceutical Biostatistics Group is a not-for-profit association of pharmaceutical industry statisticians in Australia, whose mission is to ensure high statistical standards within Australia to assist in the decision processes which provide safe, efficacious and cost-effective health care products produced in a regulated environment for the health and quality of life of people. For more information on the scholarship, please see the original posting.

Congratulations to our SSA Fellowship Funding Award Recipients!

The SSA extends our congratulations to our latest SSA Fellowship Funding Award Recipients:

• Clara Grazian, UNSW
• David Gunawan, University of Wollongong
• Lauren Kennedy, Monash
• Houying Zhu, Macquarie University
• Tao Zou, ANU

These early career statistical researchers are currently hard at work on their ARC DECRA Fellowship applications. Those whose DECRA applications are successful will receive $3000 to complement their fellowship activities. We wish them, and all of our members applying for DECRAs and Future Fellowships, all the best in the preparation of their applications. A round to support our members applying for NHMRC Investigator Grants (at the Emerging Leadership level) will be opened early in 2022.

Jessica Kasza
SSA President

Sieves help us cook pasta and rice, whilst bootstraps come in handy when donning a pair of boots. The September 2021 seminar to the New South Wales branch had nothing to do with cooking or dressing. However, statistics has borrowed these terms quite heavily and Professor Han Lin Shang of Macquarie University's Department of Actuarial Studies and Business Analytics explained how statistical sieves and statistical bootstraps aid the analysis of functional time series data.

The main parameter of interest throughout the talk was the memory parameter when the time series exhibited long-range dependence. A central question is obtaining confidence intervals for this parameter and a recent Journal of the American Statistical Association paper by the author and two co-authors addressed this problem.

The rise of functional time series data is due to ongoing improvements in technology, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging for measuring brain function. Han Lin described functional data in stochastic process terms and how functional time series arise when the time series index is a continuous time variable. Despite the continuum aspect of the framework, in practice the measurements are at discrete time points. Professor Shang explained the difference between dense and sparse functional data - with the former having high sampling frequency. Various theoretical constructs such as continuous time covariance functions, Mercer's representation, Karhunen-Loeve expansion and functional auto-regressive integrated moving average models were explained as being useful for analysis of functional time series data.

Then speaker Shang discussed long-memory processes and formally introduced the memory parameter. Various estimators were described and, based on the speaker's 2020 simulation study, methodology by time series researchers Peng and Whittle were recommended. After that, the branch was told how sieve bootstrapping can be used to obtain confidence intervals for the memory parameter. Simulation results showed good performance of Professor Shang's new methodology.

At the end of the presentation it was pointed out that the sieve bootstrap approach can be applied to any memory parameter, whilst asymptotic confidence intervals are only possible for a selected range of memory estimators.

Matt Wand, University of Technology Sydney

Science & Technology Australia Media Release Widespread job insecurity, a spike in workloads and fatigue, and devastating job losses are eroding the morale of Australia’s science workforce at a time when we need science at its strongest, new research has found.  The ual Professional Scientists Employment and Remuneration Report by Science & Technology Australia and Professional Scientists Australia reveals the mounting toll on scientists of the pandemic and longer-term chronic job insecurity.     This year’s survey lays bare a steep drop in morale amid growing exhaustion, mounting workloads and job insecurity from short-term work contracts and the high stakes lottery of science careers relying on competitive grants. Science & Technology Australia Chief Executive Officer Misha Schubert said Australia’s scientists desperately needed better job security. “There’s a huge risk that many more of our brilliant scientists will hit breaking point and just walk away if we don’t fix this broken system of insecure work,” she said. “We need stronger investment in science such as a $2.4 billion Research Translation Fund and much greater job security for scientists to avert a disastrous loss of talent and pursue a science-led recovery.” “This year’s federal Budget is a legacy-defining opportunity for a lifeline for Australian science.”  Science & Technology President Associate Professor Jeremy Brownlie said the “pincers of the pandemic and precarious work” were taking a brutal toll on scientists. “Australia’s scientists have prevented a vast number of deaths in this pandemic - yet our country isn’t supporting them nearly well enough in return,” he said. “We’re seeing rising levels of fatigue, a bleak drop in morale, and widespread job insecurity with job losses at universities and precarious short-term contracts.” Nearly two-thirds of scientists surveyed said morale at their workplace had fallen in the last year - a steep spike up from one in two who said morale fell in 2020.  And seven in ten scientists said fatigue levels had risen this year - another steep rise from the five in ten who said the same last year. Almost one in four scientists in today’s survey said they were on a fixed-term contract, with an average length of 18 months, offering very little job security. Modelling by Universities Australia estimated 17,300 jobs were lost at universities in 2020, a devastating toll fuelling workloads and job insecurity for staff who remain.  Key findings from this year’s scientists survey include: ·         62.5 per cent of scientists surveyed said morale fell in their workplace in the last year. That’s a big jump from 45.8 per cent in 2020. ·         70.6 per cent of scientists said fatigue had risen over the past year - up from 54.6 per cent in 2020. ·         One in four scientists surveyed were on fixed-term work contracts, with an average contract length of just 18 months. ·         39.4 per cent of scientists have not had a pay increase in the last 12 months (with pay freezes at many universities amid the pandemic’s financial hit). ·         Women scientists earn just 82.8 per cent of male scientists’ salaries - a gender pay gap of 17 per cent. ·         One in five scientists (19.9 per cent) indicated they plan to leave the profession entirely in coming years. This figure was 18.3 per cent in 2020. ·         Scientists are working an average of 7.5 hours overtime each week. 58.9 per cent said they received no extra pay or compensation for overtime. Science & Technology Australia and Professionals Australia run this survey every year to gather accurate data on salaries and workplace conditions.  The survey of 1,275 professional scientists ran in June 2021. The full report is here. Media contact: Martyn Pearce, Science & Technology Australia - 0432 606 828 If you or anyone you know needs help: Lifeline on 13 11 14 Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636 or its COVID-19 support service 1800 513 348 Headspace on 1800 650 890

The SSA Environmental Statistics section proudly announces a new annual student prize for best student paper in environmental statistics.  To be eligible a student must be:

• An author of a paper that has been accepted in the previous 12 months, having made a substantial contribution to the work
• A student at the end of semester 1 this year (June 30 2021)
• A current member of the SSA and the Environmental Statistics Section

The winner will receive $500 and will be asked to present in an invited session at the next annual stats conference (in 2023). 

Please submit your nominations to eo@statsoc.org.au, with Tjanpi Award submission in the header, by 5 PM AEDT Thursday November 4^th 2021, including:

• Full name, institution
• Paper, as one pdf file.
• Letter of support from supervisor or other academic at the institution, confirming student status of applicant and describing the student's role in the paper. 

      Central Australian landscape dominated by Tjanpi, photo by Sara Winter

Tjanpi is the Pitjantjatjara word for Triodia, a spiny tussock-forming grass that dominates the vegetation across more than 20% of Australia’s land mass.  It is a long-lived plant that makes deep roots and can withstand the hardiest of conditions.  It can grow over decades into characteristic ring formations three metres in diameter.  As a source of food and shelter, Tjanpi is fundamental to life in some of Australia’s most extreme conditions, being central to highly diverse ecosystems dominated by termites and ants, as well as reptiles, birds and small mammals.  It has also been traditionally used by Indigenous people for a range of purposes, including building shelters, making an adhesive resin, basket weaving, fishing and using its seeds as a food source. 

Tjanpi is an analogy for the Environmental Statistics student award – because the development and application of appropriate statistical techniques is fundamental to good environmental research, and our hope is that the recipient of this award will grow over the coming decades to become central to a diverse range of interesting research endeavours!

The SA branch of the SSA held its Statistics Careers Event on 8 September, 2021. The event was an opportunity for current students and recent graduates to learn about the sorts of roles that statisticians in South Australia are currently working in. A variety of statisticians gave presentations on the places they work, the skills they have developed in their roles, and upcoming opportunities for graduates.

Sam Rogers represented The Biometry Hub at the University of Adelaide, where statistics and machine learning are used to analyse modern and sophisticated problems in plant breeding, biotechnologies, wine science and human nutrition science.

Chris Davies spoke about the Australia and New Zealand Dialysis and Transplant Registry (ANZDATA), the national registry which collects data on kidney dialysis and transplant patients.

Julian Whiting from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) spoke about the role of statisticians in Australia's official statistics agency, and gave some examples of projects he has been involved in.

Richard Woodman and Barbara Toson from the Flinders Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics (FCEB) discussed their experience of working as statisticians in a medical research group, and the way career paths form out of this work.

Jennie Louise represented Adelaide Health Technology Assessment (AHTA), and spoke about statistical consulting work and the variety of problems and she and her team have come across.

Barbara Francis from Avance CRO discussed the sorts of work undertaken by statisticians preparing designs and analyses for clinical trials in a CRO, as well as opportunities and career paths for statisticians in this company.

Robert Jorissen from SAHMRI spoke about his work on ROSA, the registry of older Australians, and their projects evaluating the epidemiology of aged care in Australia.

Approximately 15 students attended and enjoyed the opportunity to chat with the invited speakers after the presentations, and were able to gain some insight into their future career paths.

We thank all the employers and above listed presenters for their continued support of this event within South Australia. All the students had an opportunity to engage and interact with the presenters after the event.

Annie Conway