Robin Turner (statistician)

Robin Maree Turner (born 1976) is a New Zealand statistician, and is a full professor at the University of Otago, specialising in applying biostatistics to health-related research. She is the director of the Biostatistics Centre in the School of Medicine.

Academic career
Having wanted to be an astronaut as a child, and then turning her attention to astronomy, Turner initially studied physics, astronomy and mathematics at the University of Canterbury. Turner then completed a PhD titled Independent component analysis of personality and symptoms of depression and statistical parametric mapping of personality and brain function also at Canterbury. Her research was supervised by Irene Hudson. After living in Australia for twelve years, where she worked at the University of Sydney, and the University of New South Wales, Turner then returned to New Zealand to join the faculty of the University of Otago in 2017. She was promoted to full professor in 2022. She is the inaugural Director of the Otago School of Medicine Biostatistics Centre.

Turner's research focuses on applying biostatistical methods to health-related research. She works across a variety of health-related areas, including epidemiology of respiratory viruses, risk factors for chronic disease, and how to improve the follow-up and monitoring of cancer patients. She has also worked on methods for designing clinical trails to allow the effect of patient treatment preferences to be assessed, and is interested in investigating the accuracy of diagnostic tests.

Personal life
Turner is a keen bagpiper.