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Aidan Wilson
Digital Research Services Manager
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Email:
aidan.wilson@intersect.org.au
Academic Background:
Master of Arts, Linguistics
BLib. Stud., Linguistics
About:
Aidan Wilson is Intersect’s Digital Research Services Manager, helping supervise and mentor the team of Digital Research Analysts based on site at member universities, and managing Intersect's training program. Prior to this role, Aidan was the DRA at Australian Catholic University, where his role included administering the REDCap system, delivering user training, and supporting ACU’s users with consultation and advice. Since joining Intersect as a Digital Research Analyst in 2015, he has worked across several universities with research from a diverse range of disciplines. He is also a REDCap developer, having published several External Modules, and is active in the consortium community, assisting other administrators with tips, tricks, and troubleshooting.
Aidan has a Masters by Research in Linguistics from Melbourne University, where his research was focused on the verb morphology of the Traditional Tiwi language, from the Tiwi Islands, Northern Territory. He has 9 years of experience at PARADISEC as data manager, archive systems officer; 7 years as Field Linguist and researcher.
Personal Interests:
Australia's Indigenous languages. Data management. Automation and solution design. Cycling, bicycle maintenance, crosswords.
Dr. Ankit Beniwal
Digital Research Analyst - University of New England
BSc, High Performance Computational Physics (Honours) (First Class), University of Adelaide
Personal interests
Data collection, visualisation, and analysis; using data science and machine learning tools to solve complex problems
Experience
Dr. Ankit Beniwal is a Digital Research Analyst at the University of New England, commencing his new role in mid-May 2024. He holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Adelaide and has garnered extensive research experience during his tenure as an associate at King’s College London, UK, and UCLouvain, Belgium, over a period of 5 years. Transitioning to the industry, Ankit brings over 8 years of expertise in utilising diverse programming software and operating high-performance computing systems. He is now dedicated to leveraging his academic background to explore machine learning tools and advance data-driven solutions in both research and practical applications.
Computational study of chemistry, biophysics and nanomaterials.
Experience:
Jeff Wang is the Intersect Digital Research Analyst for Western Sydney University, with a research background in Computational Chemistry. He is the WSU Qualtrics Brand Admin and one of the WSU REDCap administrators. Jeff has more than 3 years’ experience in delivering training courses and supporting researchers on the use of digital research tools, such as Qualtrics, REDCap, and Excel.
Dr. Jianzhou Zhao
Digital Research Analyst - University of Technology Sydney
Training and researcher engagement. Engineering system design and optimisation. Renewable energy innovation.
Experience:
Dr Jianzhou Zhao is a Digitial Research Analyst based at University of Technology Sydney. Jianzhou holds a PhD in Photovoltaics and Solar Energy Engineering. He has 6+ years as an digital research training instructor and coursework demonstrator; 2+ years as a Project Manager and a Research Assistant.
Dr Jianzhou Zhao has been a Digital Research Training Specialist at Intersect for 5 years and, since July 2023, he has been the DRA for UTS.
Jianzhou is working with his colleagues at Intersect and the UTS eResearch team to help guide the development and deployment of relevant eResearch services; and, increase the visibility and acceptance of good eResearch practices across all areas in the university.
PhD Information Science Master of Arts (Digital Library Learning) Grad. Dip Info Studies Bachelor of Music
Personal Interests:
New and emerging roles for information professionals, particularly around data science, research data management, and in the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) sector; Digital Humanities; Public Libraries' relationship to the Public Sphere.
Experience:
Dr Katherine Howard is Intersect Australia's Digital Research Analyst for UniSA. She supports UniSA researchers by providing expertise in various digital tools and technologies, facilitating access to NCI's HPC (Gadi), and coordinating Intersect's training program for UniSA staff and students. Katherine's background is in Information Science and she has extensive national and international experience as a researcher and academic. Katherine was most recently a Research Fellow with the ARC-funded 'Library and Information Science Research in Australia' (LISRA) project, aimed at enabling and encouraging research in Australia's library and information profession. Prior to this, she was an Early Career Development Fellow at RMIT; has held academic positions at QUT and UniSA; and undertaken sessional work with Curtin University and Charles Sturt University. Dr Howard has received many scholarships and research awards. She was awarded a two-year scholarship to undertake the Erasmus Mundus International Master in Digital Library Learning, studying with world-renowned Information Science scholars in Norway, Estonia and Italy. Katherine was the first person outside of North America to win a Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, and her PhD, completed at QUT, was nominated for an Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award. Katherine's research focuses on new and emerging roles for information professionals, particularly around data science, research data management, and in the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) sector. She also has a keen interest in the Digital Humanities.
Spatial analytics, ICT4D, Applications of technology in education, public sector, and research.
Experience:
Marium joined Intersect as the DRA for University of Adelaide in 2021. She has over 10 years of experience incorporating technology and data analytics across multiple industries (including education, health, corporate sector, governance, and research) and multiple geographies (USA, Pakistan, Singapore and Australia). Marium has a background in computer science with a Masters in Educational Technology.
Dr. Olivia Davies
Digital Research Analyst - Australian Catholic University
PhD, Evolutionary Biology BSc (Hons) Ecology, Evolution, and Chemistry
Personal Interest:
The use of data in complex problem-solving, adaption and resilience of communities and biological systems to changing conditions, education
Experience:
Olivia Davies is a Digital Research Analyst based at Australian Catholic University. She has a background in biological sciences, having completed a PhD in molecular and evolutionary biology applied to Australian’s glorious native bees. Olivia has also worked in local government on the challenges of climate change resilience and mitigation in the community. With 8+ years experience in data and statistics teaching, Olivia is passionate about meaningful, straightforward, and best practise application of data analysis to problem-solving and research.
Peta Scott
Digital Research Analyst - University of New England
I have a personal interest in using behavioural economics to create communities and improve business functions. The reuse of data is also a point of passion.
Expertise:
Peta Scott has been the Intersect Digital Research Analyst at the University of New England since late 2018. Peta has a broad research background spanning environmental science, mental health, higher education, learning analytics, and behavioural economics. Peta has expertise in both qualitative and quantitative research methods, practices, and software with specialisations in R programming, SPSS, Qualtrics, and NVivo. Peta also prides her work on strategic projects at UNE focussing on business improvements. Peta also enjoys supporting researchers by simplifying complicated programs and processes. Peta has years experience in higher education research, corporate analysis and strategic projects.
PhD, Computational Design Bachelor of Computer Science & Engineering
About:
Sachin Wasnik is a Digital Research Analyst based at Deakin University. He has broad experience in the design and development of Data Science projects. He has worked as a Digital Research trainer leading Python, R and Data visualisation courses. He has finished his PhD in applying Deep Learning to EEG time series data at the University of Sydney.
Personal Interests:
Data Science, Machine Learning
Experience:
Sachin Wasnik is a Digital Research Analyst based at Deakin University. He has broad experience in the design and development of Data Science projects. He has worked as an eResearch trainer leading Python, R and Data visualisation courses. He has finished his PhD in applying Deep Learning to EEG time series data at the University of Sydney.
PhD, Exercise and Sport Science Bachelor of Exercise and Sport Science (Honours) Bachelor of Business (Sport Management) Bachelor of Commerce (Economics)
Personal Interests:
Physiology and psychology of endurance exercise, macroeconomics, education.
Experience:
Dr Sam Ryan is a Digital Research Analyst at Intersect Australia, based at La Trobe University. He is a Doctor of Exercise Science with research experience in quantitative data collection and analysis methods, data management practices, and teaching of research technologies to research students and early career researchers. He remains an active researcher in the field of exercise science alongside his work with La Trobe researchers and is currently completing a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Economics. He has 6 years as a Sport Scientist in professional football, 5 years as an active researcher at Australian Catholic University and University of Technology Sydney, 3 years as a Sessional Teaching Academic at La Trobe University.
PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering Master of Telecommunication and Information Systems Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and Automation
Personal Interest:
Digital platforms and approaches in broad research disciplines on data acquisition, visualisation, analysis and automation. Support researchers to achieve their best research goals and outcomes.
Experience:
Dr Xiaoying Wang is Intersect’s Digital Research Analyst at Deakin University (Burwood campus). She has a PhD of Electrical and Computer Engineering from RMIT and worked with Cook Medical and RMIT on multiple university-industrial collaborative projects for 4 years as a postdoctoral researcher, with research focus on computer vision, image processing, machine/deep learning and data analysis. She has 7 years of experience in high-quality collegiate teaching on engineering and computer science subjects. She has also designed and established digital platforms to support interdisciplinary projects in biomedical research, material and manufacturing research for automatic data characterisation, visualisation and analysing using MATLAB, C++ and R languages.
PhD Applied Mathematics (UNSW) Master of Applied Mathematics (ANU)
Personal Interests:
Using mathematical and numerical methods to solve real-world problems
Data-driven models
Programming languages
Experience:
Dr Sahar Masoudian is a Digital Research Analyst at Intersect, based at the University of Canberra. She holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of New South Wales. Her research focused on applying stochastic approaches to bushfire research to incorporate uncertainty related to environmental inputs into the modelling process. Since 2016, she has been tutoring and teaching statistics and mathematics courses at various universities.
