Rafael de Andrade Moral – Chair

My name is Rafael, I am a Lecturer in Statistics at Maynooth University. I hold a BSc in Biology and a PhD in Statistics from University of São Paulo, Brazil. I really enjoy teaching and doing research related to the development and application of statistical modelling techniques to Biology and Agriculture, more specifically Ecology and Entomology. I am also interested in the computational implementation of statistical models, especially under the form of R code. Besides the work in the academia, I enjoy playing guitar and writing music, as well as performing magic tricks. Last, but not least, I love German Shepherd dogs! My personal webpage.

Shirin Moghaddam – Vice-Chair

I obtained my PhD in Statistics from National University of Ireland, Galway after I had finished my Bachelor and Master degree in Statistics at the University of Tehran, Iran. Following my PhD, I joined the prostate cancer research group in UCD Conway Institute as a postdoctoral research fellow and worked on accurate grading and staging of prostate cancer. Currently, I am a Lecturer in Statistics at University College Cork. My research interests include Survival analysis, Bayesian approach and Machine learning, in particular, their application in cancer research.

Amir Jalali – Secretary

My name is Amir and I am a lecturer at University College Cork. I received my PhD from NUI Galway, where I worked on translational statistics and developed ‘DynNom’ package in R to visualise statistical models. During my postdoc in UCD, I’ve worked on developing predictive models for prostate cancer. My current research focuses on predictive models, model visualisation and cancer research.

Davood Roshan – Website Manager

I am Davood Roshan, a young statistician and lecturer in NUI Galway. My primary research interest is in the longitudinal analysis of clinical biomarkers. In particular, in my PhD, I developed individualised and dynamic reference ranges for clinical biomarkers that are recorded longitudinally over time. My research domain includes but not limited to medicine, sport, engineering, finance and etc. I also have special interest in translational statistics, data visualisations and data science with a focus on developing predictive tools. See my academic webpage.

Niamh Cahill – Outreach Officer

I am an applied statistician with interests in developing statistical models for the analysis of time dependent, compositional and/or spatial data. One aspect of my research focuses on the development of statistical models to assess and interpret population-level health trends, specifically family planning indicators, on a national and sub-national level. As well as this I work on the statistical analysis of indicators of climate change, specifically sea-level change. I use a Bayesian approach to statistical modeling, which is suitable for developing complex hierarchical models, accounts for uncertainties related to model parameters, incorporates prior knowledge, and shares information across data populations. My research covers a range of statistical disciplines including: stochastic processes; time series analysis; computation and simulation and multivariate analysis.

Fatima-Zahra Jaouimaa – Ordinary Member

Hi, I am Fatima Jaouimaa and I’m a PhD student in Statistics at the University of Limerick. I graduated with a BSc in Economics and Mathematical Sciences from the same university. My research area is survival analysis and in particular, I’m looking at multi-parameter regression in this setting.

Silvia D’Angelo – Ordinary Member

Hi! My name is Silvia and I am a postdoctoral researcher in University College Dublin. My research involves developing novel statistical methodology for various types of multidimensional data. I quite enjoy working on data-related problems and over the years I have had experience with many different types of data, such as social networks, metabolomic or genomic data. Outside of Statistics, I am a hiking and tag rugby enthusiast and enjoy every sort of outdoor activity. My personal web page. See my personal webpage.

James Ng – Ordinary Member

James Ng is Assistant Professor in Statistics and Data Science at Trinity College Dublin. He was previously lecturer in Statistics at University of Wollongong, Australia. He obtained his PhD from University College Dublin. His research involves developing statistical models and inference techniques that reveal structure in data with complex dependency, including social network data and spatio-temporal data. This work includes developing mixture modelling, latent variable modelling and meaure trasport methodology to uncover structure and describe dependencies in complex data. His research is motivated by the fact that complex data such as network data are increasingly prevalent in many areas of applications. The emergence of such data sets requires developing effective and practical statistical tools. In addition to statistical methodological research, his research interests also include applications of statistics and machine learning to finance, health science and epidemiology.

Jonathan Henderson – Ordinary Member

I am Jonathan Henderson, and I am a PhD student in statistics at Queen’s University Belfast. I graduated in 2020 with an MSci in Mathematics and Statistics & Operational Research. My PhD is based in spatial statistics in particular, using point pattern analysis to examine the loss of retinal ganglion cells in glaucoma.

Lisa McFetridge – Ordinary Member

Lisa is a Lecturer in Statistics in the Mathematical Sciences Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. She completed her PhD in 2014, which developed robust joint models to analyse changing biomarkers and the risk of death for haemodialysis patients. Alongside furthering this work, Lisa’s current research interests focus on the advancement of mixed effects models, analysis of emotions using machine learning techniques, innovative survival analysis for medical research and discrete choice modelling of consumer demand. Lisa is the Education Officer of the Irish Statistical Association, Treasurer of the International Biometric Society British and Irish Region and is a member of the RSS Conferences & Events Programme Board. Her online profile can be found webpage

Category: Committee