Nicholas Tierney
Research Fellow in Statistics, Monash University
Education
Postgraduate
2013-17 PhD Statistics, Queensland University of Technology. Supervisor: Kerrie Mengersen
Award APA ($24,500 Annually for 4 years) ; IDTC Top Up ($10,000 Annually for 4 years) .
Research Research covers model-based exploration methods of missing data, Bayesian longitudinal modelling of individual and group health in a mining site, optimal placement of Automatic Electronic Defibrillators (AEDs), modelling geospatial cardiac risk, and the production of R packages to facilitate research impact.
Undergraduate
2008-12 B. PsychSc (Honours), University of Queensland. Supervisor: Philip Grove.
Research Conducted psychophysical research on whether sharpness of a leading edge in a 3D environment improves under specific scenarios of monocular occlusion in the thesis: “How Sharp is Sharp?: The Effect of Monocular Texture on Enhancing Sharpness.” Awarded first class honours.
2010 Exchange semester, McGill University. Studied History of Personality Theory, Abnormal Psychology, Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships, Ethics, and Intermediate French.
Teaching
SEB113
2015 “Statistical Methods for Science”. Developed computer lab material with RMarkdown, produced instructional videos, and taught workshops.
Awards
2015 Overall University Winner “The Joy of Stats” Sessional Teaching and Reflection Showcase (STARS)(Presentation).
2015 Vice-Chancellor’s Performance Award for innovation in teaching in SEB113 ($2,500).
Publications
Papers
2016 “S3 Methods: A Simple Guide.” Tierney, N.J. The R Journal. Submitted. [Pre-print]
2016 “Bayesian Approaches to Modelling Occupational Health.” Tierney, N.J. Mengersen, K., Harden, F., Harden, M. Occupational and Environmental Medicine. In Preparation.
2016 “Optimising placement of AEDs in cases of geographic variability”, Tierney, N.J., Mira, A., Jost, Mengersen, KL., Aurrichio, A. Circulation. In Preparation.
Projects
R packages
2015- naniar: Tidy data structures, summaries, and visualisations for missing data.
2016- visdat: Preliminary exploratory visualisation of data once.
2016- treezy: Tools for working with decision trees in R.
2017- mmcc: Fast and tidy methods for summarising mcmc chains using data.table
2014- neato: Miscellaneous Utility functions in R
Blog
2013- I maintain a personal blog, njtierney.com, to share code and statistics, and to engage in dialogue with the statistics and r-programming communities.
Conference Items
Contributed Talks
Posters
2016 “Bayesian Approachs in Occupational Health Surveillance” Tierney, N.J., Mengersen, K., Clifford, S., Drovandi, C., Harden, F., Harden, M. World Meeting for the International Society for Bayesian Analysis.
2015 “The Sharpest Tool in the Shed” Tierney, N.J., Mengersen, K., Harden, F., Harden, M. Bayes on the Beach.
2015 “Integrating Occupational Hygiene, Medicine and Engineering in a Mining Context.” Harden, M., Steer, C., Harden, F., Butler, G., Mengersen, K., Tierney, N.J., Ann. Occup. Hyg., Vol. 59, No. Supplement 1, 1–47 doi:10.1093/annhyg/meu119. (Peer Reviewed Poster).
2014 “Missingness, Mixtures, and Multiple Imputation” Tierney, N.J., Mengersen, K., Harden, F., Harden, M. Bayes on the Beach.
Tutorial
2017 Reproducible documents with Rstudio, Markdown, Github, Angletr, Anglet, France. (Invited Speaker)
2015 Developing Bayesian Models for Ranking Academic Papers, Bayes on the Beach, Gold Coast, Australia.
Presentations
Invited Talks
2016 “Interactive Maps in R: Getting a lay of the land”, Nicholas Tierney, Gates Cambridge group, Cambridge University, UK.
Professional Experience
Invited Academic
2017 Inter-Disciplinary Institute of Data Science at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Lugano, Switzerland, July 10 - July 14. Collaboration with Professor Antonietta Mira of USI and Professor Angelo Auricchio of the Center for Computational Medicine in Cardiology (CCMC) on optimising placement of Automatic Electronic Defibrillators (AEDs) in Switzerland.
2016 Inter-Disciplinary Institute of Data Science at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Lugano, Switzerland, June 18 - July 9. Collaboration with Professor Antonietta Mira of USI and Professor Angelo Auricchio of the Center for Computational Medicine in Cardiology (CCMC) on optimising placement of Automatic Electronic Defibrillators (AEDs) in Switzerland.
Invited speaker
2016 Gates-Cambridge Group, Cambridge University, England. July 20 - July 23. Presented a 2-hour workshop on using R for the exploration and visualisation of geospatial data.
Science Communication
2016 “Science Meets Parliament”, Canberra, Australia, fully sponsored travel provided by SSAI.
2013 “Statistics for Journalists”, Australian Science Media Centre Brisbane, Australia.
rOpenSci
2016 Organiser of the first rOpenSci Unconference in Australia.
SSAI
2013- SSAI Assistant Chair of Biostatistics.
2013-16 SSAI Young Statisticians Representative for Queensland.
BRAG
2014 Meeting Chair for Bayesian Research and Applications Group (BRAG), QUT.
Talks
2013-16 Industry Doctoral Training Centre (IDTC) Student Conferences, Various.
2013-16 Bayesian Research and Applications Group (BRAG) Research Meetings, Various.
Technical skills
- R
- STATA
- JAGS
- LaTeX
- GitHub
- Machine Learning
- Bayesian Statistics
- Data visualisation
- Reproducible Reporting
Social Activities
Climbing
2014- Master of Ceremonies at State and National Climbing Championships.
2012,14 Executive Committee of the University of Queensland Mountain Club (UQMC).
2014 Appointed Honourary Life Member of the UQMC.
2015-16 Archivist and Magazine Editor of the UQMC.
Social Justice
2007-09 Volunteer at Edmund Rice Camps.
References
Available upon request