Associate Professor Vanessa Selak | Course DirectorVanessa is Head of the Section of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at the School of Population Health, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland. Vanessa and Katrina are co-directors of the University of Auckland's Health Data Platform. Vanessa is medically trained, has a PhD in Epidemiology, is a fellow of the New Zealand College of Public Health Medicine and has 20 years' health sector experience in clinical, planning & funding, and quality roles. Vanessa’s research and teaching is focused on using routinely collected electronic health data to answer questions from a variety of perspectives: clinical, epidemiological, health service and quality. Underpinning all of her work is the aim of supporting improvements in equitable health outcomes.
Associate Professor Katrina Poppe | Co teaching staffKatrina is the Director of the VIEW Data Ecosystem and analytical practice at the Section of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, and the Heart Foundation Hynds Senior Fellow. Katrina and Vanessa are co-directors of the University of Auckland's Health Data Platform. The theme of Katrina's research is around improving the accuracy of cardiovascular risk assessment and management at the level of the individual. Standard risk assessment is well established (at least in some countries), but larger steps need to be made towards more personalised risk estimation. Katrina has a background in clinical cardiac physiology and in medical statistics, and her research bridges cardiovascular medicine, advanced clinical technology, data science, applied statistics and epidemiology, with applications ranging from public health to advanced cardiology. There is enormous potential for further development of this combined approach to cardiovascular research.