Our team
Joanne PottsCompany Director, Consultant Statistician
Joanne is the Director of The Analytical Edge Statistical Consulting. She has worked in Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA in both academic and government settings as a statistical consultant. show more »
After completing her undergraduate degree at The University of Melbourne in Applied Statistics and Environmental Science, she worked as a consultant statistician at the Arthur Rylah Institute for Ecological Research within the Victorian State Government. Here, she completed research in a variety of ecological applications, such as assessing the impact of salinization, and habitat fragmentation.
In 2006, Joanne left the Victorian state government and moved to the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling at University of St Andrews in Scotland, to undertake her PhD studies. She was supervised by Prof. Stephen Buckland, Dr. Len Thomas, and Dr Anne Savage, and developed methods for incorporating animal movement data into capture-recapture analysis for abundance estimation for small mammals.
Her post-doctoral research was undertaken at the Centre for Environmental Sciences, the University of Southampton, England. Her project, titled “Understanding the status, autecology and taxonomy of UK Biodiversity Action Plan Species”, was funded by DEFRA, UK.
More recently, Joanne’s work has focused on risk analysis within biosecurity and engineering settings, working as a Research Fellow at the Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis, the University of Melbourne. For example, she developed risk-based trace priorities for disease outbreak [PDF], funded by DAFF; and assessed statistical methods (namely, maximum likelihood estimation and median-rank regression) for dealing with heavily censored data, funded by DSTO.
Please see Joanne's Google Scholar Profile for update record of her peer reviewed, scientific publications.
She is available for contact at 
for further information.
Collaborators
Grant Telford
Grant is Director and Principal consultant at Biosecurity Solutions Australia Pty Ltd. show more »
He has made a significant contribution to Australia's favorable biosecurity status and has over 20 years experience working for the Queensland government at a senior level in the areas of biosecurity planning, management, strategy, policy and legislation.
Grant's 'on ground' experience coupled with his extensive knowledge of legislation, policy and procedure has delivered sound biosecurity outcomes - including the eradication of the exotic disease of citrus, citrus canker, in 2009 in his role as Program Manager of the National Citrus Canker Eradication Program.
Steve Candy
Steve Candy is a consultant statistician. show more »
Steve's first appointment was as applied statistician for the Botany Bay Study in 1977/78 working on the macro-benthos and water quality of Botany Bay. He then spent a year working in econometrics with Australia Post. In 1979 he began work as Forest Biometrician with the Tasmanian Forestry Commission, a position he held until 2002 when he began work with the AAD. During his time working in forest research he completed a research Masters degree in quantitative ecology (1990) and a PhD (2000) in applied statistics, both in the area of forest entomology and including a substantial amount of his own field work.
His work as Forest Biometrician involved constructing mathematical/statistical models of forests, design of forest inventories, training field measurement crews, and providing support, advice and training in the application of statistical methodologies and the use of statistical software to other scientists. His work as Applied Statistician with the AAD has included modelling fisheries catch and effort data, fish and krill growth modelling, experimental design and analysis for seabird by-catch mitigation studies as well as a number of smaller consulting projects.
From 2006 until 2012 he was responsible for the integrated stock assessment for Patagonian toothfish for the Heard and McDonald Islands EEZ and has been a delegate to the CCAMLR Working Group on Fish Stock Assessment from 2002 to 2012. In April 2013 he was appointed to lead the Data Analysis and Synthesis Group of four statisticians within the Wildlife Conservation and Fisheries program.
In his career as a biometrician/applied statistician Steve has always strived to provide practical tools and timely and relevant advice to collaborating scientists, senior management, and other clients. Steve has also completed statistical consultancy projects outside of his government employment to a variety of organisations including both industry and government. Please see Steve's Google Scholar Profile.