Gillian Heller

Professor Gillian Heller is the Professor of Biostatistics at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre within the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney, where she joined in 2020 in a part-time capacity. She holds a BSc (Hons), an MSc, and a PhD, and brings over 30 years of experience as a biostatistician and academic statistician to her role. In her current position, Professor Heller coordinates the consulting and outreach activities of the biostatistics group and is actively involved in the design and statistical analysis of multiple clinical trials conducted at the centre. Prior to this appointment, she served as Professor of Statistics at Macquarie University, where she is now an Honorary Professor in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Between 2014 and 2019, she chaired the Biostatistics Collaboration of Australia, a multi-institutional consortium that delivers a postgraduate program in biostatistics across the country.

Professor Heller's research specializations centre on biostatistics, including flexible regression modelling, distributional regression, and continuous ordinal regression for visual analogue scales. She has authored several influential textbooks, such as Distributions for Modeling Location, Scale and Shape: Using GAMLSS in R (Rigby et al., 2019, CRC Press), Flexible Regression and Smoothing: Using GAMLSS in R (Stasinopoulos et al., 2017, CRC Press), and Generalized Linear Models for Insurance Data (De Jong and Heller, 2008, Cambridge University Press). Notable recent publications include Distributional regression in clinical trials: treatment effects on parameters other than the mean (Heller et al., 2022, BMC Medical Research Methodology), Improvements in clinical signs of Parkinson’s disease using photobiomodulation: A prospective proof-of-concept study (Liebert et al., 2021, BMC Neurology), Predictors of adherence to a step count intervention following total knee replacement: an exploratory cohort study (Duong et al., 2022, Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy), and contributions to the FAST trial protocol for reducing falls after stroke (Dean et al., 2021, International Journal of Stroke). Professor Heller has also led projects on flexible regression modelling consolidation and translation of ordinal regression models into practice.

Professional Email: gillian.heller@sydney.edu.au