Academic, Researcher and Data Scientist, Lecturer,

Professional Statistical Consultant, Computer Programmer

Curriculum Vitae (CV) including a complete list of publications and presentations: download here.
A description of skills, knowledge, and abilities: download here.

Academic Roles

Professional Roles

Among other responsibilities, I was statistical (epidemiological) consultant to the departments within the Cancer Council of Victoria (CCV), advising on their research needs in all areas of cancer-related statistics and epidemiology. I was responsible for producing cancer survival rates using the data from the Victorian Cancer Registry as maintained by the CCV.

During my employment at the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) (Victoria, Australia) as a statistician (biometrician), I was a specialist in the design and analysis of complex experiments. I was a state-wide statistical consultant to agricultural and food scientists at DPI as well as external stakeholders. I worked on high-impact national and international projects with industry and government stakeholders (major projects outlined in my CV).

In 2019, I was an invited academic to travel to the Boston Children’s Hospital Research Lab and Department of Neuroscience at Harvard in the US. I visited the wet-lab to consult on the experimental design and analysis of their big-data zebrafish larval studies for new precision medicines to treat childhood epilepsy. As a result, I was a Fulbright finalist for my research proposal into designing and modelling zebrafish studies with high-throughput data for precision medicine for childhood epilepsy. Output from my research on investigating, analysing, and modelling the high-throughput data, were research seminars, and invited speaker presentations at La Trobe University and the Boston Children’s Hospital Research Lab. My knowledge and years of experience in experimental design and cohort studies were invaluable to this research topic.

Overview

Dr Natalie Karavarsamis is statistics researcher and consultant, data scientist, coder/programmer, and lecturer. Natalie has been Lecturer and Researcher at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at La Trobe University and at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne. Natalie serves as technical sub-editor on the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics, and as reviewer on a number of international peer-reviewed journals, such as, JABE, ANZSTAT, Biometrics, Austral Ecology, Journal of Pediatric Medicine.

Natalie obtained her PhD in Statistics at School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne. Prior to completing her PhD Natalie completed a Bachelor of Science Degree and a Bachelor of Science Honours Degree graduating with First Class Honours at University of Melbourne.

Aacademic roles include Lecturer at School of Mathematics and Statistics (University of Melbourne), Postdoctoral Research Fellow at School of Biosciences (University of Melbourne) and with School of Mathematical Sciences (RMIT), and Research Fellow at Department of Food and Land Sciences (prior to PhD candidature) (University of Melbourne).

Natalie’s research expertise is developing new statistical methodology, analysing, and modelling, for statistical ecology, sparse data, large longitudinal biological data, genetic data, neuroscience and epigenetic data, medical statistics and financial data. Demonstrated in Natalie’s extensive publication record in in peer-reviewed journals and books in her roles as research academic, professional statistician and consultant (list of publications in CV).

Natalie is a world leader at developing methods, models and software with modern statistical approaches. For example, for occupancy data with partial likelihoods, conditional and composite likelihoods, GLMs, Gams, IWLS. Circular statistics, cylindrical distributions and HMMs for large biological data. Natalie has developed her own R software package; her two-stage R package for modelling occupancy data (in release).

Natalie has forged global collaborations with Boston Children’s Hospital and Department of Neuroscience at Harvard University (USA), with Statify at INRIA University of Caen (France), and with the School of Biosciences at University of Melbourne, the University of Kent, and La Trobe University, and elsewhere.

Natalie has twenty years industry statistical consulting experience and worked on large international industry projects for NGOs, national and international governments, and commercial industries and stakeholders (details in CV).

Natalie has delivered successful statistics courses for more than two decades, at tertiary level (undergraduate and postgraduate), professional level, and private sector (details in CV). Natalie supervises research students; Honours, Masters and PhD candidates in Statistics, Ecology, and Social Sciences, and AMSI scholars (Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute). She has extensive industry training experience in developing and delivering successful workshops, and supervises research assistants, teaching staff, tutors, and students.

Roles and Responsibilities

Natalie is academic, researcher, consultant, and educator, who performs in multiple roles with full responsibility that require managing tight and competing deadlines.

She is exprerienced at holding full teaching duties, developing, coordinating and delivery large-scale probability, statistics, and programming undergraduate and postgraduate courses. She is responsible for developing statistical and programming teaching curriculum and material, assessment material and examinations. In addition to managing the online interactive teaching module. Teaching responsibilities involve responding to student queries, providing student consultation and supervising teaching staff. She is examiner and assessor of International Student applications for undergraduate and postgraduate Coursework and Research Science Degrees. She is Examiner of Honours, Masters and PhD theses. She is Science Course Advisor for Mathematics and Statistics, career advisor and student mentor. Committee member, organiser and speaker for O-week (orientation and welcome of new tertiary students). Supervisor of research students for Honours, Masters and PhD candidates. Outreach duties include ambassador for STEMM subjects and careers, as speaker for secondary college students, and tertiary students.

In her role as researcher, she manages deadlines associated with research and developing new statistical methodologies and submissions to peer-reviewed journal articles, as sole author, first author and/or co-author in a team of collaborators, and responds to their queries. She has experience preparing grant submissions. She has served as reviewer and technical sub-editor international peer-reviewed journals. She has expereince hosting overseas academic guests, at organising and co-chairing conferences and academic/professional workshops, and travels as invited academic guest and speaker for her research to nationally and internationally.

Events

Publications

List in my CV – click here to download

Supervision

Available for Honours, Masters and PhD supervision.

Grants & Awards (selected)

Press & Gallery

2018 AMSI Choose Maths Day, La Trobe