Associate Professor
Darren Wraith
Faculty of Health,
School of Public Health & Social Work
Biography
Dr Darren Wraith is an Associate Professor of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health and Social Work, Faculty of Health, Queensland Institute of Technology. Dr. Wraith has a Bachelor of Mathematics (2003) from the University of Newcastle, Australia and a PhD in Statistics (2008) from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia. He also has a Bachelor of Commerce (Economics) and P.Grad Diploma in Health Economics & Evaluation from Monash University (1996) and was a Research Fellow in Health Economics at the Centre for Health Program Evaluation, Monash University (1997-1998).Dr Wraith’s work enables the evaluation of human behaviours, public health outcomes and environmental impacts on health.
Before his appointment at QUT, Dr Wraith worked internationally, spending five years in France as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Université Paris-Dauphine, Paris and as a Research Engineer at INRIA, Grenoble.
Dr Wraith has published in a variety of international journals across a range of academic topics such as problem gambling and the effects of environmental pollutants.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
- Bayesian statistics
- mixture models (clustering/classification)
- environmental exposures and outcomes
- assessment of interaction between risk factors
- spatial and temporal modelling
- computationally efficient methods for parameter estimation
- bioinformatics
- high dimensional analysis
- assessment of risk factors for problem gambling
Personal details
Positions
- Associate Professor
Faculty of Health,
School of Public Health & Social Work
Keywords
air pollution, environmental health, latent variable modelling, structural equation modelling, bayesian statistics
Research field
Statistics, Public health, Other biomedical and clinical sciences
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2020
Qualifications
- PhD (Queensland University of Technology)
Teaching
Dr Wraith has taught at an undergraduate and postgraduate level for a decade and a half in several tertiary institutions, including:
His QUT teaching profile includes:
Semester 1 Subject Coordinator, Health Statistics 1 (Postgraduate) Approx. 80 students (students from cardiac imaging, public health, pharmacy) School of Public Health & Social Work QUT
Semester 1 & 2, Subject Coordinator, Statistical Methods in Health (Undergraduate) Approx. 300 students each semester (students from pharmacy, medical imaging, nursing, nutrition, radiology) School of Public Health & Social Work QUT
Experience
Professional development
Effective University Teaching, Graduate Certificate in University Teaching, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne.
Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy
Grants & Awards
Since returning to Australia in 2013, Dr. Wraith has been a Chief Investigator on grants worth around $2.5 million dollars. This includes two NHMRC funded grants: Biofocussed Prostate Cancer RadioTherapy (BiRT): A Personalised Approach to Delivering the Right Dose to the Right Place ($753,565); and Cancer Risks from Low-Dose Ionising Radiation following Diagnostic Medical Procedures ($721,860).
Other grants and work with industry/government include:
- Queens Wharf Brisbane (QWB) Safety Study (2018/19), Department of Industry, Development and Tourism, Queensland Government (Co-chief researcher with Prof. John Scott and Dr. Michael Hathaway, School of Justice, QUT)
- QWB Gambling Impact Study (2017/18), Department of State Development, Queensland Government (Chief researcher)
- Medical Science Writer, Specialist Medical Reviews, Department of Veterans Affairs (2018)
- Development of a risk prediction tool for cardiovascular disease (2018), Merridown Family Surgery, Gold Coast, Australia.
- Theatre Skills for the Classroom (2014). University of Melbourne Teaching & Learning Initiatives Grant (Chief Investigator)
- Bayesian mixture modelling for characterising environmental exposures and outcomes (2008). PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology (Received Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence).
Research Translation and Impact
Research examining the risk of lung cancer and the interaction between exposure to smoking and asbestos (Wraith et al (2007); Wraith et al (2008)) has been highly cited and led to a better understanding of the risks of asbestos exposure in recent work by the IARC programme evaluating the carcinogenicity of asbestos (2011).
Publications
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Darren, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).
Selected research projects
- Title
- Developing Evidence-Based Responses for a Climate-Resilient Mental Health Care System
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- 2035399
- Start year
- 2025
- Keywords
- mental health services; climate change adaption; risk assessment; data linkage; informed decision making
- Title
- Statistical Methods for Quantifying Variation in Spatiotemporal Areal Data
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP200100468
- Start year
- 2021
- Keywords
- Title
- Biofocussed Prostate Cancer RadioTherapy (BiRT): A Personalised Approach to Delivering the Right Dose to the Right Place
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- 1126955
- Start year
- 2017
- Keywords
- Radiotherapy; Prostate cancer; Image processing; Mathematical modelling; Brachytherapy
- Title
- Cancer Risks from Low-Dose Ionising Radiation following Diagnostic Medical Procedures
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- 1084197
- Start year
- 2015
- Keywords
- Ionising Radiation; Cancer; Paediatric; Nuclear Medicine; Radiology
Projects listed above are funded by Australian Competitive Grants. Projects funded from other sources are not listed due to confidentiality agreements.
Supervision
Current supervisions
- Gambling and mental health: uncovering the underlying temporal mechanisms
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Michelle Gatton - Evaluating the impact of casino developments and expansions: gambling related harm, benefits, and harm minimisation utilisation in vulnerable groups
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Associate Professor Christina Malatzky - Enhanced infectious disease modelling by integrating multiple sources of data under uncertainty
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Associate Professor Susanna Cramb - Exploring the Interrelationship Between Adolescent Marriage, Agency and Nutrition Among Adolescents and Young Women in Nepal
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Margo Sendall, Dr Smita Nambiar-Mann - Impact of grass pollen exposures on public health: an investigation of pollen seasons, health indicators and sustainability
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Janet Davies - Evaluating Machine Learning Approaches on Big Data: Predicting Customer Contact from Services Australia's Large-Scale Longitudinal Administrative Data
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Richi Nayak - Enhanced Longitudinal Analyses for Community Opioid Dispensing following Injury
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Associate Professor Susanna Cramb - Associations between school disciplinary exclusion and mental health difficulties among children in New South Wales, Australia
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Kristin Laurens - Autonomous identification, quantification, and characterization of airborne grass pollen and investigation of contributing weather factors in subtropical Queensland
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Janet Davies, Dr Andelija Milic - Describing the relationship between food literacy, demographic characteristics, dietary intake and food insecurity
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Associate Professor Helen Vidgen
Completed supervisions (Doctorate)
- Determinants and distribution of coexisting forms of malnutrition among neonates, infants and children of Pakistan (2023)
- Investigating Riyadh's Public Health Inspectors' Ability to Conduct Risk-Based Food Inspection, and Their Professional Needs: A Mixed-Methods Research Study (2021)
- Assessment of a Seasonal Pattern of Acute Episodes of Schizophrenia and Potential Drivers in Queensland, Australia (2020)
- Identifying Factors Influencing Saudi Arabian Nurses' Turnover (2019)
- Impact of Ambient Temperature on Hospital Admissions for Acute Myocardial Infarction in Central Coast of Vietnam (2018)
The supervisions listed above are only a selection.