About
I spent seven years working directly with athletes and coaches in professional rugby union and league, across sport science and strength and conditioning roles up to Olympic level. A big part of that work was figuring out what coaches actually needed to know, then turning data into something they could use to make a decision.
I now bring that experience to data science. I use statistical modelling and simulation to understand uncertainty and help with difficult decisions. I’m working towards tools that can handle the complexity underneath without putting that complexity on the person making the decision.
Experience
2023 – present
NSW Health Pathology
Senior Data Scientist May 2024 – present
Data Scientist Oct 2023 – May 2024
Data extraction, curation and analysis, and communicating the findings to executive stakeholders across the organisation.
2022 – 2023
2022
NSW Waratahs
Sports Scientist Apr 2022 – Oct 2022
Turning data into knowledge to support decision-making in the high performance department.
2016 – 2022
Rugby Australia
Head of Athletic Performance, Men’s Sevens Sep 2021 – Apr 2022
Athletic Performance Coach, Sevens and National Referees Feb 2020 – Sep 2021
Sports Performance Scientist, Women’s Sevens Jul 2018 – Feb 2020
Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach, Men’s Sevens Aug 2016 – Jul 2018
Led the development, planning and delivery of the athletic performance programme for the national men’s sevens squad, after earlier roles providing performance coaching and sport science services to the national sevens teams and elite referees.
2015 – 2016
Wests Tigers
Physical Performance Assistant Apr 2016 – Aug 2016
Sports Science and Strength and Conditioning Intern Nov 2015 – Apr 2016
Education
2018 – 2023
PhD, Sport and Exercise Science
University of Technology Sydney. Supervised by Dist. Prof. Aaron Coutts.
Practical strategies for female rugby sevens athletes to maximise performance and health in hot and humid competition conditions.
2013 – 2017
Bachelor of Sport and Exercise Science (Honours)
University of Technology Sydney.
Honours 2017
Bachelor’s degree 2013 – 2016
Honours research on contextual factors affecting elite men’s rugby sevens performance.
Skills
Methods
Bayesian and multilevel modelling, probabilistic forecasting, Monte Carlo simulation, statistical machine learning.
Tools
R, Python and SQL. Bayesian modelling with Stan and brms; reproducible reporting with Quarto; visualisation with ggplot2 and gt.
Domain
Seven years in professional sport working directly with athletes, coaches and performance staff across sport science, strength and conditioning, athlete monitoring and player tracking data.
Research
My published research is in sport science, not data science. It comes from work with elite rugby sevens athletes in training and competition. Selected first-author papers:
- Core Body Temperatures in Intermittent Sports: A Systematic Review. Sports Medicine, 2023.
- Responses to a 5-day sport-specific heat acclimatization camp in elite female rugby sevens athletes. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 2022.
- Changes in core temperature during an elite female rugby sevens tournament. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 2020.
- Individual factors affecting rugby sevens match performance. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 2019.
- Rugby sevens match demands and measurement of performance: a review. Kinesiology, 2018.