Nicola Armstrong

Nicola Armstrong is a Professor at Curtin University in Western Australia, where she serves in the School of Electrical Engineering, Computing and Mathematical Sciences within the Faculty of Science and Engineering. She is currently the Discipline Lead for Mathematics and Statistics (2024-25) and serves as president of the Western Australian branch of the Statistical Society of Australia.

Dr. Armstrong received her PhD from the Department of Statistics at UC Berkeley. Her academic journey has taken her from postdoctoral work in the Netherlands to positions at the Netherlands Cancer Institute as a senior statistician and the Garvan Institute as a senior bioinformatics officer before joining Curtin University.

Her research spans multiple disciplines at the intersection of statistics, genomics, and biomedical science. Dr. Armstrong has made significant contributions to:

• Development of statistical methodology for genomic analysis
• Application of statistics to cancer research
• Studies of healthy ageing and dementia
• Genome-wide association studies (GWAS)
• Epigenetics and biomarker research

Analysis of her recent publications reveals a strong focus on the genetic and epigenetic factors influencing brain structure, cognitive function, and age-related diseases. Her work often involves large-scale collaborative efforts through international consortia, particularly in the areas of neuroimaging genetics and dementia research. Many of her recent studies employ multi-omics approaches to understand the complex interplay between genetic variation, environmental factors, and disease outcomes.

Dr. Armstrong actively contributes to the academic community through her teaching of statistics and data science courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, including STAT1006 Regression and Non-parametric Statistics, STAT3001 Statistical Modelling, STAT4002 Introduction to Applied Statistics, STAT5009 Decision Methods and Predictive Analytics, and ACTL4003 Predictive Analytics Principles.