Dr Robert Mahar received a PhD in Biostatistics at the University of Melbourne in 2019 following his completion of a Masters of Biostatistics at the University of Queensland in 2014. He is a Senior Research Fellow in Biostatistics at both the University of Melbourne School of Population and Global Health Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Unit.

He is a nationally recognised leader in platform trial design and has developed several cutting-edge adaptive randomised clinical trials now operating globally within diverse clinical contexts including Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia, bowel cancer, Covid and cancer, long Covid, preterm pre-eclampsia, and preterm perinatal medicine. Informed by his clinical research collaborations, he leads a program of methodological research focused on developing innovative statistical methods to design and analyse adaptive clinical trials.