Dr Aloke Phatak is working on a project to understand climate extremes with the Climate Adaptation Flagship

Dr Aloke Phatak: going to extremes for climate research

Dr Aloke Phatak is using his expertise in climate statistics to help understand extreme weather events and phenomena.

• 14 February 2011 | Updated 14 October 2011

Overview

• Current activities
• Background 
• Academic qualifications 
• Achievements 
• Prominent publications 

Current activities

Dr Aloke Phatak is currently working on understanding climate extremes such as drought, floods and heat waves that affect our lives and livelihoods. 

His work is in modelling and downscaling rainfall and temperature extremes in both current and future climates.

He also actively engages with stakeholders such as government agencies and other enterprises to understand what kind of climate information they require to facilitate policy-making and adaptation decisions.

Background

After beginning his professional life as a research scientist investigating the formulation and processing of solid rocket propellants, Dr Phatak returned to the University of Waterloo, Canada, to obtain his Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Engineering, but with a strong focus on applied statistics in chemistry in chemical engineering.

In 1993, he joined CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics, first in Sydney and now in Perth, where he continues to carry out research in applied statistics, most recently in the area of modelling and downscaling of climate extremes.

Dr Phatak has worked with a broad range of collaborators and clients including government agencies, large and small enterprises, and other CSIRO scientists.

Projects have included:

• environmental monitoring
• signal processing
• calibration
• statistical process control
• development of expert systems based on Bayesian networks
• biomarker discovery
• bioinformatics
• statistical downscaling
• modelling of climate extremes.

Dr Phatak is also passionate about helping his clients and scientific collaborators understand statistics, statistical modelling, and uncertainty.

His broader interests include the history and philosophy of science as well as statistics education and science communication.

Academic qualifications

Dr Phatak has been awarded a:

• Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo in 1983
• Master of Science in Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo in 1985
• Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo in 1993.

His doctoral studies focused on the statistical and algebraic properties of a widely-used but little-understood statistical method known as partial least squares, and the work is highly regarded internationally.

See a list of scientific papers published by Dr Phatak in his publishing history.

Achievements

Dr Phatak has been invited to speak at international conferences, including the Gordon Conference on Statistics in Chemistry in Chemical Engineering, International Symposium on PLS, and Sessions of the International Statistical Institute.

He was the president of the WA branch of the Australian Statistical Society, and is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Chemometrics.

Read more about CSIRO's work in climate statistics, Forecasting: dealing with uncertainty.