Rate My Professor Blair Robertson

Blair Robertson is an Associate Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics within the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Canterbury. He obtained his BSc in Mathematics and PhD in Mathematics from the University of Canterbury, completing his PhD in 2010 with a thesis titled 'Direct search methods for nonsmooth problems using global optimization techniques' supervised by Christopher J. Price. Previously, he held the position of Assistant Professor at the University of Canterbury. As the 100-level Data Science & Statistics Coordinator, Robertson contributes significantly to undergraduate education and supervises Master's and doctoral students. He is also a member of the Biosecurity Innovations research cluster at the university.

Robertson's research centers on optimization algorithms and spatially balanced sampling designs, with applications in environmental monitoring, ecology, and statistics. His publications appear in leading journals including Biometrics and Environmetrics. Notable works include 'Well-spread samples with dynamic sample sizes' (Biometrics, 2024), 'Spatially Balanced Sampling With Auxiliary Variables' (Environmetrics, 2025), 'spbal: An R package for spatially balanced master sampling' (Australian & New Zealand Journal of Statistics, 2025), 'Doubly balanced samples with dynamic sample sizes' (Biometrics, 2026), 'Spatially balanced sampling designs for environmental monitoring' (Journal of Applied Ecology, 2019), and 'One Side Cut Accelerated Random Search' (with C.J. Price). He co-developed the R package 'spbal' for implementing spatially balanced master sampling. Robertson's contributions have earned over 700 citations on ResearchGate. He received the New Zealand Statistical Association Worsley Early Career Research Award on 25 November 2015 and the Faculty of Engineering Established Teaching Award on 9 December 2022.