Panel Discussion: What Makes a Great Di Cook Prize Application?

An ECSSN event in collaboration with the Statistical Computing & Data Visualisation Section of the SSA: Panel Discussion: What Makes a Great Di Cook Prize Application?

Are you building an R package or thinking of submitting your work for the Di Cook Prize?

Join us for a lively and practical panel discussion with past recipients, judges, and open-source contributors as we explore:

✅ What makes a strong Di Cook Prize application
✅ Best practices in building and documenting R packages
✅ Common challenges and how to overcome them
✅ Insights into contributing to the R and open-source ecosystem

Panellists:

Dianne Cook is a Professor of Statistics in Econometrics and Business Statistics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She holds a PhD in Statistics from Rutgers University. Her research focuses on statistical graphics, with an emphasis on interactive visualisation of high-dimensional data and statistical inference for data visualisation. Di is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and a Board Member of the R Foundation. She is a past editor of the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, and The R Journal, and author of numerous R packages.

Dr. Nicholas (Nick) Tierney is a statistician, Research Software Engineer, and freelance consultant with a PhD in Statistics who specializes in data analytics, R package development, and teaching. Previously, he worked with Prof. Nick Golding at The Kids Research Institute Australia and was a Research Fellow at Monash University with Professor Dianne Cook, where he developed tools for exploratory data analysis including visdat, naniar, and brolgar (more at his github page). 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.

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 co-authors the R package bsvarSIGNs that won the 2024 DiCook Award. 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.

Fonti Kar is a postdoctoral research fellow at The Australian National University and has a background in evolutionary biology, quantitative biology and open-source tool building. She is interested in the sources of biological variability in plant and animal breeding where she leverages mixed modelling techniques to solve agricultural problems. Fonti is currently working on the Analytics for Australian Grains Industry project and is an advocate for openness, in science and in code. She has developed numerous software to support ecological research and maintains the R package 'austraits'. Fonti is passionate about data science education and empowering others with collaborative coding and package building skills.

Dr Patrick (Weihao) Li is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Research School of Finance, Actuarial Studies and Statistics, Australian National University. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce (majoring in Business Analytics), an Honours degree in Econometrics, and a PhD in Statistics from the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics at Monash University. His research focuses on machine learning, data visualization, visual inference, and computer vision, with a particular interest in automating the evaluation of diagnostic graphics and understanding how people interpret them.

Whether you're a student, early-career statistician, or open-source enthusiast, this session will offer valuable guidance and inspiration.

All welcome — bring your questions!

For more information, contact Daniela Vasco (Chair, ECSSN): d.vasco@griffith.edu.au