Two biostatisticians join QCIF 

William Pinzon Perez and Joshua Knowles have joined QCIF’s Biostatistics team.

After working with QCIF as a casual biostatistics training instructor for three years, William has joined the team full-time as a Gold Coast-based Junior Statistician.

As a fully-certified The Carpentries instructor, William will continue to assist QCIF with its training program for researchers, including providing and developing training materials.

He will also work across all QCIF’s biostatistics clinics for its Members and on any QCIF projects requiring his expertise.

QCIF’s Head of Biostatistics, Dr Anne Bernard, said William had demonstrated professionalism and expertise in all the statistical techniques QCIF presented in its training program.

“William joining the biostatistics team is a wonderful opportunity to develop our training expertise, and his background in econometrics will bring additional skills to the team that were needed. I am very excited to welcome William to the team,” said Anne.

William said: “I joined QCIF looking for the opportunity to broaden my knowledge of statistical analysis and gain experience applying it in a wide variety of research projects; and to help move the meaningful research done in the Queensland universities forward.”

Originally from Colombia, William has a Master’s of Applied Econometrics from The University of Queensland and a Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Engineering from Colombia’s Universidad Industrial de Santander (Industrial University of Santander), where he also worked as a researcher for two years.

As well as assisting QCIF with its R and SPSS programming workshops, William has worked as a Econometrics Teaching Assistant at UQ for the last three years. He was the winner of the university’s 2019 School of Economics Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Joshua (Josh) Knowles has joined QCIF as a casual Brisbane-based Biostatistician following a two-month internship with QCIF’s Biostatistics team.

Josh will assist a cutting-edge single-cell and spatial digital profiling project at UQ, which QCIF is supporting with single-cell RNAseq analysis and spatial transcriptomics. He will also be involved in the development and delivery of QCIF’s training program.

During Josh’s QCIF internship, Anne said he demonstrated “dedication and incredibly rapid progress.” 

“Josh is a wonderful addition to the team, with his strong programming skills and statistical background, and helps maintain a great teamwork environment. I am very happy to have Josh on board,” said Anne.

Josh will undertake his QCIF work alongside his studies for a Bachelor of Science (Honours) at UQ, focusing on a project involving statistical genetics.

He already has a Bachelor of Mathematics, majoring in Statistics, with a minor in Computer Science, from UQ.

“I completed a statistics degree in 2021 and wanted to use the knowledge and skills I gained to make an impact in health and medicine,” said Josh.

“I’m looking forward to exploring the wide range of areas and projects QCIF enables me to work in, including workshop delivery and single-cell analysis.”

Alongside his studies, Josh has also worked as a software developer in the financial services sector. 

QCIF Member researchers who need help with biostatistics may book an appointment or submit a request to access the services of the QCIF Biostatistics team.