At the core of this ongoing collaboration is the ACEMS-ARCL co-funded postdoctoral position held by Dr Stephen Wright. As an applied statastician Stephen spends 50% of his time in a research role at ARCL providing support around clinical trial design and statistical analysis. The other 50% of his time is psent at the Unversity of Technology Sydney (UTS), under the supervision of ACEMS Chief Investigator Louise Ryan, exploring interesting methodological probkens and long standing research qustions arising from his work at ARCL. This novel mechanism for an on-going partnership has been highly successful in fostering real world impact and research translation.
Co-funded Postdoctoral Position
The co-funded postdoctoral model enables real world problems to be idntified that also push the frontiers of statistical research, and most importantly, being embedded in both organisations means that the research outcomes are utilised by ARCL to directly impact how they conduct their core business.
Through this partnership Dr Stephen Wright has addressed a range of methodological challenges relevant to ARCL as well as long standing open research questions that including:
- Use of predictive modelling to improve opertaional efficiencies and reduce the number of unnecessary tests within the blood manufacturing process.
- Undersatnd the health outcomes of donors that donate regularly over a long period of time.
- Develop novel modern statitsical methods for analysis of big data. For example, analysign risk factors associated with adverse events for blood donors - a problem that could not previously be analysed due to database processing limitations.
ACEMS continues to develop an ongoing partnership with ARCL through yearly research planning meetings and collaborative research projects where researchers from both organisations come together to tackle current methodological challenges.