The Random Sample

What happens when a journey takes 13 years in Earth time, but less than four years for the traveller? It’s one of the most intriguing ideas in Project Hail Mary , the bestselling novel and blockbuster film. But surprisingly, it’s not just science fiction. It’s science. In this episode, MACSYS Research Fellow Dr Tom Kimpson helps us unpack the fascinating concept of velocity time...

What does a data scientist actually do? And how do you become one? Data is everywhere. Every day, vast amounts of information are generated through research, healthcare, business, technology, and our daily lives. But collecting data is only part of the story. The real challenge lies in making sense of it. That's where data scientists come in. In this episode, we meet four data scientists whose car...

Multiple sclerosis, or MS, affects millions of people worldwide, yet many aspects of the disease remain poorly understood. One of its defining characteristics is the way symptoms can fluctuate over time, with periods of relapse followed by remission. What drives these cycles, and why does the disease appear stable one moment before suddenly worsening the next? In this episode, we speak with Dr Adr...

In 2020, as COVID-19 spread across the globe, researchers faced an urgent challenge: finding treatments that could save the lives of patients hospitalised with the virus. One of the most important efforts was the RECOVERY trial, a clinical trial designed to rapidly test potential therapies and generate reliable evidence at a time when the world desperately needed answers. Our guest, Professor Thom...

It’s a question many early career researchers grapple with: academia or industry?  For Professor Roslyn Hickson, the answer is simple: why choose? Roslyn is an applied mathematician with a joint appointment at CSIRO and James Cook University, where she serves as Science Leader for Emerging Infectious Diseases. Her career has taken her across academia, the military, government and indust...

How do airlines schedule flights, logistics companies route deliveries, and supermarkets manage stock? Many of these challenges are examples of  linear programming  problems – and one algorithm has dominated their solution for decades: the  Simplex Method . Widely regarded as one of the most important algorithms ever developed, the Simplex Method has helped organisations save...

How are  statistics and data science transforming advances in genetic sequencing  into new insights about how people lived, formed families, and organised their societies thousands of years ago? Our guests are Dr Adam “Ben” Rohrlach, an Australian statistician at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, and Dr Simon “Jono” Tuke, Senior Le...

In this episode of  The Random Sample , we explore the science of scale – from the behaviour of granular materials to the remarkable world of nanotechnology. Professor Natalie Thamwattana, an applied mathematician from the University of Newcastle, shows how studying the very small can lead to big insights across science and engineering. Her pioneering work in nanotechnology is helping u...

Mathematics is often used to model how diseases spread. But what about the spread of information – or misinformation – about those diseases and their vaccines? Professor  Stacey Smith?  from the University of Ottawa is a trans mathematician whose research focuses on modelling infectious diseases. Increasingly, her work has turned to the social and behavioural dynamics that sh...

Mathematics is not often associated with women’s health, yet the mathematical sciences are playing an increasingly important role in understanding pregnancy, reproductive health, and chronic conditions that disproportionately affect women. Professor  Alys Clark  and Dr  Claire Miller , both from the Auckland Bioengineering Institute at the University of Auckland, use mathemati...

Each year, the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Program recognises a small number of exceptional female early‑career researchers in Australia and New Zealand with a prestigious fellowship. In 2025, for the first time since the program began in 2007, the award went to a mathematician:  Dr Maria Kleshnina  from QUT’s School of Mathematical Sciences. Maria’s rese...

The  Kalman filter  is a hidden mathematical tool with an enormous impact on our daily lives. Most people have never heard of it – yet it quietly powers everything from spaceflight and aviation to our GPS, smartphones, and wearable devices. Developed in the late 1950s and early 60s, the Kalman filter provides the optimal solution to this problem: If you have an imperfect prediction...

Scientists are generating more biological data than ever before, and new technologies now allow us to peer inside the cell in ways we couldn’t have imagined a decade ago.  But even the most advanced tools can’t explain how a living cell actually works as a complete system. That’s the challenge at the heart of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for the...

Understanding a living cell is one of the biggest challenges in modern science. Cells carry out an extraordinary number of tasks every second and understanding how all those processes fit together is central to biology. But even with advanced experiments and mountains of data, scientists still don’t have a complete picture of what a cell does – or how it might respond to new conditions...

Technology is transforming how we understand society. For decades, researchers relied on surveys to learn about populations. But today, data comes from everywhere - administrative records, social media, and even fitness trackers. In this episode, we explore this shift with Professor Frauke Kreuter - a global leader in social data science. She explains how combining traditional survey methods with...

For decades, surveys have been the backbone of official statistics - helping us measure everything from population trends to economic activity. But response rates have been falling dramatically across the world for the past few decades. This decline is forcing statistical agencies to rethink how they collect the data we all rely on. In this episode, we explore the shift toward multi-source data wi...

Modern slavery is often hidden in corporate supply chains, making it hard to detect and eliminate. Countries like Australia now require companies to publish annual reports on their efforts to combat slavery - but with thousands of reports, no government can read them all. That’s where Project AIMS comes in. Led by Adriana Bora at the QUT Centre for Data Science, Project AIMS explores how cut...

We recently celebrated World Statistics Day on 20 October. To mark the occasion, the Statistical Society teamed up with the Australian Data Science Network for a lively online panel discussion on a topic of growing importance:  trust in data . The expert panel brought together a wealth of experience from government, academia, and industry to explore the real-world challenges of building and m...

Coral reefs are among the most diverse and valuable ecosystems on Earth – but they’re also among the most vulnerable. Thanks to climate change, pollution, and other human impacts – coral reefs are in crisis.  The need for fast, coordinated action has never been greater. One of the biggest challenges is getting accurate, up-to-date data, especially from remote or isolated ree...

The art of engagement for the Australian Bureau of Statistics  How do you make statistics and complex data not just understandable - but engaging? For the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the answer is simple: meet people where they are - on social media. From pop culture and sports to quirky factoids, the ABS social media team uses fun, relatable content to build a massive following. H...

What does it really mean for something to be complex - and how can mathematics help us make sense of it? In this episode of The Random Sample , our guest is Professor Michael Small, leader of the Complex Systems Group at the University of Western Australia. Michael’s research uses mathematics to uncover hidden patterns in the chaos of the world around us - from social networks and pandemics...

In today’s data-driven world, questions around who controls data, how it’s used, and who benefits from it are more pressing than ever. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, these questions carry even deeper significance—rooted in histories of exclusion, marginalisation, and misrepresentation. In this episode, we explore the vital issue of Indigenous data governance a...

The Random Sample  steps into the dynamic world of interdisciplinary research—viewed through the lens of data science and statistics. Our guest is a true leader in collaborative science:  Professor Galit Shmueli. Galit is the Tsing Hua Chair Professor at the Institute of Service Science at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, the inaugural editor-in-chief of the  INFORMS J...

A few short years ago, it was one of the most hyped technology fields around. But after all that excitement, where are we now with autonomous vehicles — or driverless cars? In this episode, we go  under the hood  to explore how AVs gather and use data, and the complex mathematics that helps them navigate a messy, unpredictable world. What are the challenges still standing in the wa...

We’re diving into the design and development of the tools that have transformed data science and statistical programming — with none other than Dr Hadley Wickham. Hadley is the Chief Scientist at Posit (formerly RStudio), where he leads the Tidyverse team. This team is behind some of the most widely used open-source packages in the R programming language — including dplyr  a...