Prof. Irene Hudson

Biography

Professor Irene Hudson is a mathematical statistician working in diverse research areas of drug discovery, health informatics, genomics, phenomics, bio-informatics, biostatistics and climate change modelling and phenology Mapping and modelling of micro systems (brain voxels, molecules, wood anatomical measures) and macro systems (global incidence of disease, climate) underpins Hudson's research.

Hudson has co-edited a book on modelling climate (authored 9 chapters therein): Hudson & Keatley (2010) Phenological Research: Methods for Environmental and Climate Change Analysis. Springer, 522 pp. In 2011, Hudson was an invited author of a chapter entitled Meta analysis in the Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather, Oxford University Press. Hudson is on the Editorial Board of the Climatic Change journal and part of its 100th anniversary was invited to write a major work to the journal entitled “Interdisciplinary approaches: towards new statistical methods for phenological studies”. The 3 works above are significant translational research bringing statistical and epidemiological thinking into the global climate change arena.

Psychometrics research that involves modelling brain image data with respect to personality (Turner, Hudson et al., 2003 NeuroImage) and wavelet modelling of agitation-sedation profiles of patients in ICU (Kang, Hudson et al., 2011, Discrete Wavelet Biomedical Applications, ISBN 978-953-307-654-6 ) have been Hudson’s recent areas of bio-medical applications and theory. Hudson is a member of the Priority Research Centre, CARMA at the University of Newcastle. Hudson has served on the Editorial Board of Statistical Methods in Medical Research. From 1999-2004 Hudson was Director of the Research Centre for Health Care Technology, NZ.

Professor Hudson has held academic lecturing and academic research positions at The University of Melbourne, the Australian National University (ANU), Cambridge University (UK), University of South Australia, the University of Canterbury (UC, New Zealand) and currently at The University of Newcastle. During her position at UC Professor Hudson’s main areas of research focus were medical bio-engineering applications, clinical trials research and global climate change. Adjunct posts: Current Adjunct positions at the University of Melbourne (2006-2013), Adelaide University (2010-2012) and the University of Canterbury, NZ (2006- Jun, 2011

Qualifications

• PhD, La Trobe University, 1983

Research

Research keywords

• bioinformatics & biostatistics
• climate change analytics
• drug discovery & chem-informatics
• ecological statistics
• health informatics & health linkage
• psychometrics & brain imaging
• statistical methods in bio-engineering

Research expertise

Professor Irene Hudson is also a mathematical statistician working in diverse research areas of drug discovery, health informatics, genomics, phenomics, bio-informatics, biostatistics and climate change modelling and phenology Mapping and modelling of micro systems (brain voxels, molecules, wood anatomical measures) and macro systems (global incidence of disease, climate) underpins Hudson's research.

Collaboration

Hudson is a member of the Priority Research Centre, CARMA at the University of Newcastle. Hudson joined The University of South Australia in 2006, as Director of the Statistical Consulting and Research Services and Academic Leader of Statistics. At Uni SA she forged research collaborations with environmental scientists (ARC Prof A Lowe, and Prof Chris Daniels, Barbara Hardy Research Centre) and with the Uni SA Centre for Sleep Research, with whom she gained a CRC Rail Innovation grant 2010-2012 to model fatigue in railway drivers. At Uni SA she was an active member of the Uni SA Phenomics & Bioinformatics Research Centre and the Centre of Industrial and Applied mathematics.

Hudson also took up a research only post as Sub-Program Leader of the CRC Hardwood Fibre and Paper Science, University of Melbourne from 1993–1997, where after previous years in health, biostatistics research and consulting she found her inspiration for wood informatics and phenology research, which she still has an interest in to this day. This appointment meant working closely with the pulp and paper industry, with Forest Products (CSIRO) and APPITA at Monash University; and with NZ FRI (New Zealand Forest Research Institute). The work at the CRC resulted in a major rewrite on forest sampling and assisted the development of wood quality devices and protocols.

Languages

• English
• German
• Russian
• Ukrainian

Fields of Research

Centres and Groups

Centre

• PRC - Computer Assisted Research Mathematics and its Applications

Teaching

Teaching keywords

• bioinformatics
• mathematical statistics in engineering
• non-parametric statistics
• statistical inference
• survival analysis
• time series analysis

Teaching expertise

Hudson was appointed Head of the Biostatistics Unit, Melbourne University from 1983–1989. Irene led the first statistical research group in Australia to create a paediatric diagnostic related groups (DRGs) case-mix cost, length of stay system. To that date only adult DRG's were in place. Irene has continued since then (1982 – current), both theoretical statistical research and applied research in medical biostatistics and health informatics.

In 1989-1993 Hudson was a Senior Statistical Consultant and Lecturer at the Mathematics and Statistics department at the University of Melbourne where she created an extensive consulting portfolio and continued statistical research in cystic fibrosis and lung function.

From 1997–2006 Hudson was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, at the University of Canterbury (UC) NZ, where, in clinical trials, psychometrics/brain function, modelling sudden infant death with climate, medical bio-engineering, internet traffic and climate change were the main areas of her research and published papers.