Dr Natasha Weaver

Biography

In 2016 I worked as a Research Associate with the School of Education, performing statistical analysis for the Teachers and Teaching Research Program projects including Aspirations, a four-year longitudinal study of the educational and career aspirations of primary and secondary school students. In 2012-2014 I worked as a Statistician for the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Newcastle I provided statistical support to researchers from Hunter Medical Research Institute working in various areas of public health research. Major projects included: Australian Rural Mental Health Study (5 year longitudinal study), GP diagnosis of dementia, Healthy Lifestyles (smoking intervention RCT for people with severe mental disorder), and a comparison study of ageing populations in the Western Pacific Region for the World Health Organisation. My undergraduate background is in Pure Mathematics with elective studies in Statistics and Information Science. My PhD research explored a new connection between two different areas of pure mathematics: Dynamical Systems and Operator Algebras. There is an important connection between the study of dynamical systems called Markov shifts and the study of directed graphs. In my thesis I introduced a family of higher-rank graphs (the higher-dimensional analogues of directed graphs) that arise from 2-dimensional Markov shifts with algebraic properties. I then explored the operator algebras known as C*-algebras, which are associated to this family of graphs. In particular, the C*-algebras were shown to have nice properties following from aperiodicity of the underlying graphs.

Research Interest

Applied Statistics, Epidemiology