Rate My Professor Robert Cope

Dr. Robert Cope is a Senior Lecturer in Statistics in the School of Science and Technology, Faculty of Science, Agriculture, Business and Law, at the University of New England. He obtained his BSc (Honours) and PhD from the University of Queensland in 2014. His PhD research employed genetic data and pedigree analysis to investigate indirect detection of genetic dispersal, movement, and breeding events in dugong populations in southern Queensland, Australia, published in Biological Conservation (2015).

Following his doctorate, Cope worked at the University of Adelaide analyzing data on the physical transport network, invasive species pathways, and epidemic spread. He subsequently served in the Biological Data Science Institute at the Australian National University prior to joining UNE. As an applied statistician and data scientist, Cope specializes in using data to address complex problems in the biological sciences. His academic interests include applied probability, applied statistics, Bayesian inference, epidemiology, and mathematical ecology. Recent research has concentrated on data assimilation and computational methods for stochastic models of disease dynamics, including modeling vaccination effects against the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant (Medical Journal of Australia, 2021) and strain invasion probabilities in endemic settings (Journal of Theoretical Biology, 2020).

Cope's scholarly output features impactful peer-reviewed publications, such as 'A global analysis of the determinants of alien geographical range size in birds' (Global Ecology and Biogeography, 2016), 'Predicting the risk of biological invasions using environmental similarity and transport network connectedness' (Risk Analysis, 2019), 'Characterising seasonal influenza epidemiology using primary care surveillance data' (PLoS Computational Biology, 2018), 'Ant interceptions reveal roles of transport and commodity in identifying biosecurity risk pathways into Australia' (NeoBiota, 2019), and 'Integrative analysis of the physical transport network into Australia' (PLoS One, 2016). These works contribute to fields like biosecurity, invasion biology, and public health.

At UNE, he acts as Course Coordinator for the Bachelor of Science and delivers courses including Statistical Learning (STAT330), Introduction to Statistical Modelling (STAT100), and Introduction to Scientific Programming (SCI410). Cope emphasizes developing practitioners' skills in data wrangling, visualization, and analysis.