Professor Ian James
Professor of Mathematics and Statistics
Murdoch University
Professor James has been involved in application of statistics and mathematics across a range of areas, beginning with his early work at CSIRO and as Director of the Statistical Consulting Group at the University of WA. He is currently Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Murdoch University and a Director of the Centre for Clinical Immunology and Biostatistics (CCIBS), a research center collaboration between Murdoch University and Royal Perth Hospital. In his own words, his research history is as follows.
My research has consisted largely of two phases - dominated by development of statistical methodology based on real applications prior to 2000 and by integration of powerful and new approaches to the analysis of HIV clinical and cohort data centred on CCIBS post-2000.
Research after 2000 largely represents collaborative work carried out with colleagues in CCIBS. Much of this implements novel statistical procedures and models which have facilitated the complex nature of the issues involved and have underpinned the methods we now routinely implement in analyses. In particular, we have helped define and characterise the central role of nucleoside analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTI’s) in the pathogenesis of fat wasting via mitochondrial toxicity at the level of the adipocyte; we have shown that different protease inhibitors have differential effects on bone mineral density; we identified a striking association between the HLA-B57, DR7 and DQ3 haplotype and hypersensitivity to abacavir and subsequently mapped these effects to the HLA-B*5701 and an Hsp70 homologue SNP on the haplotype and our work on HIV adaptation to HLA-restricted immune responses is proving to be of importance to the design and evaluation of HIV vaccine immunogens and is providing policy direction for the global HIV vaccine enterprise.
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