For this event, we have the pleasure of hosting a handful of inspiring early career speakers and mid-career speakers, working in industry, who will speak on their experiences. The speakers have been invited to share what they’ve learned, what they’ve achieved, what they’ve enjoyed and what surprised them, as well as, perhaps, what they don’t like, what they haven’t learned, and so on. We also have a number of senior industry speakers who have been invited to provide their sage advice, their insights and general guidance to those interested in developing a fruitful career in industry.
Each speaker will give a 10 minute talk, followed by a panel discussion of about 30 minutes. There we will do some socialising, as well as have an opportunity for audience members to freely approach each other and the speakers.
Anna Quaglieri
Bioinformatics Data Scientist at Mass Dynamics
Anna has an academic background in Statistics, completed between the universities of Bologna, Glasgow and Melbourne. Once in Melbourne, she joined the WEHI where she did her Masters research in Population Genetics, and PhD in Cancer Genomics. She then worked for 1.5 years as a Data Scientist for the AI consulting company Eliiza. Two months ago she joined the Melbourne based startup Mass Dynamics where she is working as a Bioinformatics Data Scientist. At Mass Dynamics Anna develops workflows for the analysis of mass spectrometry data, with the aim of helping more life scientists transform proteomics data to knowledge.
Kohleth Chia
Data Scientist Lead at Bunnings
Kohleth is a Data Scientist Lead at Bunnings. He is also an Accredited Statistician (AStat). His decade of experience in statistics / data sciences span across government, research institution, and industry.
Stephen Bush
Principal Optimisation Analyst at SEEK
Steve is a Principal Optimisation Analyst at SEEK, where he leads the Experimentation team. He has a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Technology Sydney. His specialisation is the efficient design of experiments and is interested in the use of experimentation at scale to enable data driven decision making and providing advice on evaluation, measurement and statistical methods.
Denzel Florez
Senior Analyst (Model Risk Management) at Macquarie Group
Denzel is a model risk analyst at Macquarie Group, performing model validation to ensure financial models comply with regulatory requirements. This involves reviewing statistical models and assessing whether model assumptions are suitable for their purpose. Denzel graduated in 2018 with Honours in Statistics from the University of Sydney.
Belinda Maher
Senior Public Transport Planner
Belinda Maher started her journey in transport data a decade ago at KiwiRail, where she worked on a $2 billion NZD upgrade of Auckland's suburban train network. After returning home to Melbourne, she took up a role at Public Transport Victoria in Operational Performance Analysis.
She now works in Network Planning at the Department of Transport (DoT) where she is involved in data-driven planning and data visualisation (including mapping).
At DoT, Belinda has worked on projects including analysing observed tram speeds across the network for on-road priority planning, and also on collating and mapping data about current and future train stations for strategic planning.
In 2021 Belinda guest lectured at Monash University in the subject Wild Caught Data, and she has previously presented to Melbourne (and Auckland) R-Ladies and the Melbourne Users of R Network.
Steph Stammel
Principal Econometrician
Steph provides strategy and advice to data science teams looking to leverage their current skills and take their companies to their next level in analytics. She is a Ph.D. data scientist with nearly 12 years' experience in the field. She is also an expert modeller and test designer, extensive fieldwork in randomised controlled designs, a strong research background.
Current fun projects include the application of weak AI-type agents and algorithms to classical forecasting models at scale, designing and delivering tools for smoothing the transition for new R users and setting up the new R-Ladies Remote chapter.
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