Nigel Bean

School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences

Faculty of Sciences, Engineering and Technology

Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD - email supervisor to discuss availability.


Professor Nigel Bean is internationally known for his research in stochastic modelling. He completed his B.Sc. (Hons) in Applied Mathematics at the University of Adelaide in 1988 and his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 1993. Since then he has been at the University of Adelaide in roles varying from a Postdoctoral fellow, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Director of TRC Mathematical Modelling – a commercially funded contract research and consulting centre with a turnover then of over $750,000 – and then was appointed Chair of Applied Mathematics in 2004. Since then, he has been continuously on the School Management Committee and Head of Applied Mathematics. He has also been Director of Research (2011-17) and Deputy Head of School (2004-06, 2012--).

The quality of Professor Bean’s research has been recognised through the award of the 2001 JH Mitchell Medal by ANZIAM and the 2003 PAP Moran Medal by the Australian Academy of Science. Professor Bean has published about 90 scientific articles and has been awarded 8 ARC awards (Large Grants, Discovery Projects and a Linkage Grant). He is a Chief Investigator on the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS) and is also on their Executive Committee as the Deputy Director (Outreach). He has successfully supervised 23 PhD students and 7 MPhil students and currently supervises 8 PhD students and 5 MPhil students.

Professor Bean has been very active in national leadership roles. From 2008-2010, he was on the Board of the Federation of the Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (now known as Science and Technology Australia) as the Mathematical Sciences Cluster Representative. In 2011 and 2012 he was a member of the ACARA Australian Curriculum: Mathematics Advisory Panel. Professor Bean was also Co-Chair of the Sub-committee for Mathematics and statistics research in universities and related institutions and a member of the Steering Committee, Mathematical Sciences Decadal Plan (2012 -- 2016), as well as being a member of the Steering Committee. He was on the Board of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) from 2014-16. He recently joined the AMSI Industry Advisory Committee and played a leading role in the Australian Industry/Mathematical Sciences Engagement Task Force.

Professor Bean has boardroom experience through his role on the FASTS Board, as Chairperson of his children’s Primary School Governing Council and as a member of the Governing Council of a high school. He has also been on the AMSI Board from 2014-16.

  • Current Higher Degree by Research Supervision (University of Adelaide)

    Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
    2023 Co-Supervisor Applications of data science and artificial intelligence to support intellectual property development in the creative industries Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Mr Anton Andreacchio
  • Past Higher Degree by Research Supervision (University of Adelaide)

    Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
    2019 - 2022 Co-Supervisor Investigating Dependence Between the Arrival Process and Service Time Distribution of Single-Server Queueing Models Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Miss Miriam Catharina Slattery
    2019 - 2021 Co-Supervisor A Machine Learning Approach for Detecting Selective Sweeps using Ancient DNA Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Mr Shing Yan Kwong
    2018 - 2023 Principal Supervisor Data Science and Usefulness in Domains of Human Action Master of Philosophy Master Part Time Mr Anton Andreacchio
    2018 - 2022 Co-Supervisor Statistical modelling of queueing systems Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Miss Sarah Ellen James
    2018 - 2023 Principal Supervisor Approximating fluid queues Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Angus Hamilton Lewis
    2018 - 2020 Principal Supervisor Stochastic Modelling of Coral-Algal Symbiosis on the Great Barrier Reef Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Mr Max Sinclair Wurm
    2017 - 2019 Principal Supervisor In the mood for food: Markov-modulated models for animal foraging Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Mr Lachlan James Bridges
    2017 - 2019 Co-Supervisor Explanatory statistical modelling of influences of demographic experience on political identity Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Mr Lachlann Bradley McArthur
    2016 - 2018 Principal Supervisor A methodology for predictive topic modelling; or, any excuse to watch Love Actually Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Miss Vanessa Grace Glenny
    2016 - 2019 Principal Supervisor Characterising the Social Media Temporal Response to External Events Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Peter Mathews
    2016 - 2018 Principal Supervisor Inference of Markovian-regime-switching Models with Application to South Australian Electricity Prices Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Mr Angus Hamilton Lewis
    2015 - 2017 Principal Supervisor Consensus Sequence Estimation Methods for DNA Sequence Data Sets Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Miss Sarah Ellen James
    2015 - 2018 Principal Supervisor Epidemic fade-out in the Markovian SIR-with-demography infection model Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Mr Peter Geoffrey Ballard
    2014 - 2018 Principal Supervisor Hybrid methodology for Markovian epidemic models Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Nicolas Peter Rebuli
    2014 - 2019 Principal Supervisor Statistical Methods for Identifying Demographic Structure in DNA Sequence Alignments Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Adam Rohrlach
    2014 - 2017 Principal Supervisor Optimal Allocation of Vaccines in Metapopulations Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mingmei Teo
    2013 - 2015 Principal Supervisor Approximations of Stochastic Household Models for Comparing Antiviral Allocation Schemes Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Michael John Lydeamore
    2013 - 2016 Principal Supervisor Medical Decision Making: Modelling Multiple Treatments Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Eka Kristiana Baker
    2012 - 2016 Principal Supervisor On the Derivation and Application of Closure Approximations of Cellular Automata Models Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Mr Kale James Davies
    2012 - 2013 Principal Supervisor Interval Markov chains: Performance measures and sensitivity analysis Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Mingmei Teo
    2012 - 2017 Principal Supervisor GHOST: A Time-reversible Mixture Model for Recovering Phylogenetic Signal from Heterotachously-evolved Sequence Alignments Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Stephen Crotty
    2012 - 2014 Principal Supervisor Data Driven Model Selection and Parameter Estimation Using Semi-Automatic Approximate Bayesian Computation to Reconstruct Population Dynamics from Ancient DNA Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Adam Rohrlach
    2012 - 2015 Principal Supervisor On the Advancement of Optimal Experimental Design with Applications to Infectious Diseases Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time David James Price
    2011 - 2015 Co-Supervisor Network Management in a World of Secrets Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Wilko Henecka
    2011 - 2015 Principal Supervisor Using Aggregated Demographic Data to Inform Electoral Boundary Redistributions: 2010 South Australian Election Master of Philosophy Master Part Time Mr Casey Simon Briggs
    2011 - 2013 Principal Supervisor Mathematical Modelling and Statistical Analysis of School-Based Student Performance Data Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Mrs Jessica Jolley
    2009 - 2015 Co-Supervisor Link Loss Tomography and Topology Synthesis Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Rhys Bowden
    2009 - 2016 Principal Supervisor Optimisation of Geothermal Systems Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Josephine Varney
    2009 - 2018 Principal Supervisor Modelling the Population and Catchability of the Southern Rock Lobster (Jasus edwardsii) in South Australia and Victoria Using Commercial Fisheries Catch Rate Data Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Mr John Erik Feenstra
    2008 - 2012 Co-Supervisor Methods for Two-Party Privacy-Preserving Linear Programming Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Miss Alice Bednarz
    2007 - 2012 Principal Supervisor Mathematical Models of Cell Cycle Progression: Applications to Breast Cancer Cell Lines Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Miss Kate Simms
    2004 - 2009 Co-Supervisor Bandwidth Allocation for Quality of Service Provision in IEEE 802.16 Systems Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Tze Tang
    2004 - 2005 Co-Supervisor An Investigation of Measurement-Based Load and QoS Management in a Distributed Audio Environment Master of Science in Mathematical and Computer Sciences Master Full Time Mr Mathew Kinghorn
    2004 - 2015 Principal Supervisor Operationalizing Resilience: Conceptual, Mathematical and Participatory Frameworks for Understanding, Measuring and Managing Resilience Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Dr Ariella Helfgott
    2004 - 2012 Co-Supervisor Throughout Management for CSMA/CA Networks IEEE 802 11e Wireless LAN Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Shafiqul Karim
    2004 - 2009 Co-Supervisor BGP, Not As Easy As 1-2-3 Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Ashley Flavel
    2004 - 2008 Principal Supervisor Time-Dependence in Markovian Decision Processes Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Dr Jeremy McMahon
    2003 - 2007 Principal Supervisor A Multidisciplinary Approach to Complex Systems Design Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Alex Ryan
    2002 - 2007 Principal Supervisor Lorikeet: An Efficient Multicast Protocol for the Distribution of Multimedia Streams Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Justin Viiret
    1999 - 2005 Principal Supervisor Network Reliability Estimation Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Kin-Ping Hui
    1999 - 2003 Principal Supervisor Analytic Modelling of Agent-Based Network Routing Algorithms Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Dr Andre Costa
    1999 - 2003 Principal Supervisor Characterization of Matrix-exponential Distributions Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Mr Mark Fackrell
    1997 - 2002 Principal Supervisor EASYWEB ACCESS PRESENTATION AND BROWSER CAPABILITIES TO SUPPORT SMALL SCREEN DEVICES Master of Science in Mathematical and Computer Sciences Master Full Time Ms Clare Saddler
    1996 - 2002 Co-Supervisor Some New Algorithms for QBDs and Block M/G/1 and GI/M/1 Markov Chains Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Emma Hunt

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