Professor Philip Schluter BSc (Hons 1), MSc (Distinction) PhD

Professor Philip Schluter received a BSc(Hons 1) in 1988, MSc (Distinction) in 1992 and PhD in 1996 all in the field of Bayesian statistics from the University of Canterbury. Concurrent with and subsequent to his tertiary training, he was employed in various capacities including: Junior Research Fellow in Biostatistics, Christchurch School of Medicine (1990-1), Biostatistician, Christchurch Community Paediatric Unit, Christchurch Hospital (1991-7), and he was the first non-medical appointment to the Canterbury Cot Death Research Fellowship, Christchurch Community Paediatric Unit, University of Otago (1997-9). More recently he worked for the University of Queensland (Australia) as a Senior Lecturer of Biostatistics (1999-2001) and Associate Professor of Biostatistics (2002-4). During this time he has won a number of scholarships and prizes including a Young Researcher’s Award to attend and present at the 5th Sudden Infant Death Syndrome International Conference in Rouen, France. Philip is currently Professor of Biostatistics and Head of Research, School of Public Health and Psychosocial Studies, Auckland University of Technology (2005-current), and Honorary Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Queensland (2005-current). He is the first professorial appointment in Biostatistics in New Zealand.

Philip has a well-established research record, having authored or co-authored around 150 peer-reviewed journal articles. Most of the research Philip has engaged with is of an epidemiologic nature, with health policy implications and recommendations. Many of his peer-reviewed journal articles explicitly deal with the social determinants of health, often embedded in local contexts but motivated by national or international public health priority areas. Implicit in successfully undertaking such public health research in the New Zealand context is having an understanding of the implications of the Treaty of Waitangi, and a commitment to working with Māori, Pacific people and other vulnerable ethnic groups, and other marginalized peoples. Philip is Co-Director of the Pacific Islands Families Study, a birth cohort study of around 1,500 Pacific families in New Zealand. Philip is also interested in thinking about, developing and applying Bayesian methods to public health problems. Bayesian methods depart from the conventional objectivist theories of probability and provide an alternative to hypothesis testing and confidence interval estimation. Philip has utilised these methods for the identification of motor accident 'black-spots', for the 'change-point' analysis of an intervention amongst assault-related hospital admissions in an Aboriginal community, and the assessment of treatment response in a series of single patient (n-of-1) trials, to name a few examples.