Researcher biography

Dr. Gary Chan is a NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research. His principal research interest lies in the field of substance misuse prevention and the application of cutting-edge statistical method for longitudinal analysis and causal inference. His recent publications have been focused on polysubstance use (including alcohol, tobacco and cannabis) profiles in adolescent populations, examinations of urban-rural differences in substance use, and the epidemiology of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis use. He collaborates extensively with leading researchers in major national and international institutes, including the University of Washington, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, University of Melbourne, and University College London. He has also served as a consultant at the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime to improve exisitng methods for monitoring global trends of illicit substance production, trafficking and use. This work has made significant impact on how global data will be collected, and these new data will be used by the United nations and many national governments to inform drug policy decision making. He is a Deputy Statistical and Methodology Editor for the journal Addiction.

Dr. Chan is also a statistical advisor at the School of Psychology, providing statistical advice to academic staff and RHD students. Since 2016, he has also delivered several advanced statistcal workshops at the School on R and statistical modelling.