IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Associate Professor Wei C. Wang BIOSTATISTICIAN
Associate Professor Wei C. Wang’s interdisciplinary research profile concentrates on behavioral nutrition, healthy ageing, health services, mental health, nursing, and medical research. Despite the depth and breadth of her research, the major contribution of her work concerns research methodology (e.g. study design, data management, manipulation of large datasets, data analysis using applied statistical modelling techniques). Wei has provided statistical support for research staff and graduate students across several universities. Her expertise is in applied statistical modelling including structural equation modeling, latent growth curve modeling, latent class modeling, mixture modeling, and multilevel modeling inter alia. Moreover, Wei’s research has involved analysing, exploring, and interpreting complex data employing a range of statistics packages: MPLUS, AMOS, LISREL, SPSS, R, and Stata. Wei’s past research has targeted Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI); Diabetes and Cognition in Older Tasmanians (TASCOG); Exercise during Haemodialysis among patients with late stage kidney disease; Mental Health in Multicultural Australia (MHiMA); Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life (MEBAL); Social Psychological Influences on Food Consumption and BMI; Addressing the food and health needs of ageing Baby Boomers; Weekly Meal Repertoire study (Meat & Livestock Australia); Resilience for Eating and Activity Despite Inequality (READI) study; Wellbeing,
C A B R I N I I N S T I T U T E A N N U A L R E P O RT 2 0 1 9 -2 0
Eating and Exercise for a Long Life (WELL) study; and Melbourne Longitudinal Studies on Healthy Ageing (MELSHA). The impact of Wei’s research is demonstrated by a Google Scholar h-index of 29 and a Research Gate score of 35.14, with 989 citations (August 2020). She has secured top tier competitive external research funding including ARC (Discovery) and industry grants. Wei has also presented the outcome of this research at international and national conferences, and co-authored several industry reports. Wei joined Cabrini Institute as a biostatistician in July 2019. Since this time, she has provided research support to medical and nursing researchers, and graduate students across several departments as well as to research teams affiliated with Cabrini. Given her statistical and research background, Wei is cognisant of the most appropriate up-to-date statistical techniques and procedures to deploy when testing research hypotheses and ensuring the reliability of results. Wei has developed an exceptional way of helping investigators to identify and understand statistical issues related to their research so that they can improve the overall quality of their research proposals and studies. She provides her colleagues with links to relevant literature and resources that assist with explaining simply the statistical concepts and analysis related to their projects. Furthermore, Wei proffers useful feedback and support to researchers on writing and reporting relating to the statistical and results sections of their manuscripts.
97
