Rate My Professor Leonie Tickle

Professor Leonie Tickle is Professor of Actuarial Studies and Executive Dean of Macquarie Business School at Macquarie University, within the Business & Economics discipline. She completed a BEc in Actuarial Studies, graduating at the top of her class, and a BA from Macquarie University, followed by the Fellowship of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia qualification. In her leadership roles, she previously served as Deputy Dean for Research and Innovation and Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching at Macquarie Business School. As Associate Dean, she oversaw strategic initiatives in teaching innovation, digital education, work-integrated learning, employability, student engagement, and staff development for 16,000 students, leading to significant improvements in student experience survey results. She spearheaded the creation of the staff teaching excellence online toolkit, which received over 165,000 hits, and initiatives such as Course Compass, the Dean’s Scholars program, and the Young Leaders program.

An internationally recognised scholar in actuarial science and demographic forecasting, Leonie Tickle is the first female actuary professor in Australia. Her research appears in leading journals including Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Scandinavian Actuarial Journal, Annals of Actuarial Science—where she co-authored the journal’s highest-cited paper—and Population Studies. Key publications include 'Ensemble interval forecasts of mortality' (Li, Wang, Liu & Tickle, 2025), 'Forecasting mortality rates using population composition data' (Tang, Li & Tickle, 2025), 'Forecasting age- and sex-specific survival functions: application to annuity pricing' (Wang, Shang, Tickle & Li, 2024), 'How temporal patterns of medication adherence to antidepressants, bisphosphonates and statins are associated with healthcare cost' (Park, Tickle & Cutler, 2024), and 'Transition from rehabilitation hospital to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) for people with brain injury and spinal cord injury: a data linkage protocol' (Guthrie, Alexander, Tickle, Winkler & Walsh, 2024). She has secured major industry-funded national and international research projects, received two national research awards including the Australian Actuaries Institute A. M. Parker Prize (1997) and H. M. Jackson Prize (2005), a national teaching award, the Vice-Chancellor’s Educational Leader Award (2021), and four Vice-Chancellor’s teaching awards. Tickle served as the Australian representative on the international Actuarial Education Committee and advocates for inclusion in business education, transdisciplinary research collaboration, and partnering for impact.