Dr Louise Ryan, Chief of CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics.

Dr Louise Ryan: Leading CSIRO's mathematical sciences research

Dr Louise Ryan took up her post as Chief of CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics in 2009, after many years at Harvard University in the USA.

• 29 January 2010 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Current activities
• Background
• Qualifications
• Achievements

Dr Louise Ryan, an Australian, has a distinguished career in biostatistics, a field of science which develops new statistical methods for health and medicine, biology and environmental sciences.

At CSIRO, she is leading a group of 150 people in mathematical and statistical research areas as diverse as financial risk, climate change and cell biology. She sees innovative mathematical sciences research as CSIRO's foundation for tackling Australia's national challenges.

Current activities

Dr Ryan is well known for her contributions to statistical methods for cancer and environmental health research. 

At CSIRO, she manages a portfolio of mathematical sciences research projects in areas as diverse as:

• light metal production
• bioinformatics
• supercomputing
• environmental modelling
• financial risk
• transport logistics.

This research contributes to CSIRO’s goal of addressing Australia’s national challenges.

Her own statistical research focuses on developing computationally efficient approaches to the spatio-temporal analysis of large health databases. 

Dr Ryan is currently a council member for the International Biometric Society.

Background

Dr Ryan was born and grew up in Australia but spent almost thirty years in the USA, where she most recently held the post of Henry Pickering Walcott Professor and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard University.

She joined CSIRO in 2009.

Prior to becoming Department Chair at Harvard, Dr Ryan served as Director of the Program in Environmental Statistics within the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard. 

Dr Ryan has worked in the area of cancer clinical trials, and preclinical studies of carcinogenicity and teratology. Her more recent work has focused on statistical methods for analysing observational data, especially in the context of environmental health studies. 

She has been actively involved in a number of high profile projects with the National Academy of Sciences in USA, including assessing the environmental risks associated with exposure to arsenic in drinking water – a major problem in some developing countries.

Dr Ryan is an experienced administrator in the university sector. As Department Chair in Biostatistics at Harvard, she was responsible for a large group comprising faculty members, visiting academics, masters and doctoral students, researchers and postdoctoral fellows, and other staff members.

She has led major projects funded by USA agencies like the:

• National Institutes of Health
• National Science Foundation
• Environmental Protection Agency
• American Chemical Council.

Dr Ryan has been a passionate advocate for diversity in higher education and was the founding director of a program for the training of minority students at Harvard.

Dr Ryan has authored or co-authored over 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

She is sought after as a speaker at conferences and other events for science and industry, with recent speaking engagements in:

• services science
• health informatics
• statistics

Qualifications

Dr Ryan has obtained a:

• Bachelor of Arts in statistics and mathematics from Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
• Doctor of Philosophy in statistics from Harvard University, USA.

Achievements

Dr Ryan has been recognised with a number of professional awards and achievements including:

• Member of the Institute of Medicine
• Fellow of the American Statistical Association
• Fellow of the International Statistics Institute
• the Spiegelman Award, conferred by the American Public Health Association
• Distinguished Achievement Award of the Environmetrics Section of the American Statistical Association
• International Achievement Alumni Award for Distinguished Service from Macquarie University
• TECHColumbus Innovation Award with Battelle colleagues for work on The National Children's Study (US).

She has served as:

• editor or associate editor for a number of statistical journals
• President of the Eastern North American Region of International Biometric Society.

Dr Ryan has received several awards recognising her contributions as a mentor to women and minority students, including:

• the Elizabeth Scott Award from the American Statistical Association
• the annual Mentors Award from Harvard School of Public Health
• a Role Models award from Minority, Inc.

Learn more about CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics & Statistics.