Rate My Professor Ari Samaranayaka

Ari Samaranayaka is a Research Associate Professor and biostatistician in the Biostatistics Centre, Division of Health Sciences, University of Otago. He earned his BSc, MPhil, DipFGT, DipFM, and PhD from the University of Otago, completing his doctoral research in 2006 on environmental stochasticity and density dependence in animal population models under the name Ariyapala Hattasinghe Samaranayaka. His career at the University of Otago has included roles such as Senior Research Fellow before advancing to his current position as Research Associate Professor. In this capacity, Samaranayaka leads biostatistical and methodological components of health-related research projects spanning disciplines including public health, epidemiology, injury prevention, physiotherapy, pharmacy, dentistry, and immunology. He supports health researchers throughout the research lifecycle, from idea conceptualization and study design to securing funding, data implementation and analysis, and results dissemination. He also supervises postgraduate students engaged in health-related or biostatistical studies, delivers introductory hands-on short courses on Stata statistical software for researchers, and serves on the Research Ethics Committee of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine.

Samaranayaka's scholarly output includes numerous peer-reviewed publications demonstrating his expertise in applying biostatistics to health outcomes and methodological advancements. Key publications encompass 'Non-response bias in a web-based health behaviour survey of New Zealand tertiary students' (Preventive Medicine, 2011), 'Risk factors for injury in rugby union football in New Zealand: a cohort study' (British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2012), 'Prospective Outcomes of Injury Study: recruitment, and participant characteristics, health and disability status' (Injury Prevention, 2011), 'Secondary health conditions and disability among people with spinal cord injury: A prospective cohort study' (The Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine, 2021), and 'A model to predict nodal metastasis in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma' (PLoS ONE, 2018). Recent works include contributions to scoping reviews on health-related quality of life instruments (Systematic Reviews, 2026) and prediction models for extranodal extension in oral squamous cell carcinoma (Journal of Oral Pathology & Medicine, 2026). His collaborations have advanced research in injury recovery, disability, and public health epidemiology at the University of Otago.