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Master of Science (with Distinction)
The University of Melbourne
| Specialisation | Statistics & Stochastic Processes |
| Minor | Pure Mathematics |
| Supervisor | |
| Thesis | |
| Grade | First Class Honours |
My primary research interest is in ensuring that the algorithms used to mediate our shared epistemic systems are aligned with human values, as well as figuring out the extent to which this is important. In particular, I seek to use methods from computational argumentation and argument mining. Subsidiary areas of interest include: information cascades, computational social choice, deliberative democracy and improving institutional decision-making. My background is in probability and statistics.
Education
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AMSI Summer School
Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute
Completed two honours-level subjects.
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Bachelor of Science
The University of Melbourne
Major Mathematics & Statistics
Specialisation Statistics & Stochastic Processes
Grade First Class Honours
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Diploma of Languages (Japanese)
The University of Melbourne
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International Baccalaureate Diploma
St Leonard's College
Grade 43/45 (equivalent to notional ATAR of 99.60)
Teaching
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The University of Melbourne
Mathematics & Statistics School Tutor
2019, 2020 2020 2020 Psychological Science: Theory & Practice (guest seminars)
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St Leonard's College
Student Study Assistant
Academic tutoring and library support for students after school, on weekends and during school holidays.
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Self-employed
Private Academic Tutor
Mainly in Mathematics, Physics and Economics. Students ranged from high school to university postgraduate level. Over 300 hours of tutoring experience.
Employment
- — Present
Population Interventions Unit, University of Melbourne
Data Visualisation
Working with epidemiologist Tony Blakely to communicate modelling of SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks, vaccination, and the consequences of government lockdowns to the public via an interactive web tool.
- — Present
Hunt Lab for Intelligence Research, University of Melbourne
Research Associate (Machine Learning & Statistics)
Machine learning and other research as part of a group working to improve the quality of reasoning in intelligence organisations.
Built Navigator, a prototype application that uses argument mining to augment analysts’ abilities to extract insight from large document corpora.
Co-facilitated the collaboration of over 100 Australian academics that led to the Roadmap to Recovery report, advising the National Cabinet on strategies for COVID-19 pandemic recovery.
Helped run the 2020 Hunt Challenge, a study that demonstrated that crowdsourced teams can produce analysis of comparable quality to that of professional intelligence analysts.
Helped conduct a major Delphi method expert elicitation on the nature of analytic rigour in intelligence work, along with its contributing factors and opportunities for improvement.
Conducted research in accordance with open science principles, pre-registering studies (1, 2) and sharing data.
- — Present
Resilient Youth Australia
Data Scientist
Developing novel statistical methods, reporting infrastructure and interactive graphs (in d3.js) to enable stakeholders to extract value from a perennial survey measuring resilience and mental health in Australian school students.
- — Present
Future Problem Solving Program Australia
International Evaluator & Future Scene Writer
Evaluating written competition booklets and writing Future Scenes at state, national & international levels.
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CSIRO Manufacturing (Biomedical)
Research Assistant
Used D3.js to visualise phase space in protein crystallisation. Originally 6-month appointment through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), with several stints of follow-up work.
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The University of Melbourne
Research Assistant
Worked with A/Prof. Tony Wirth and Dr James Saunderson in the Department of Computing and Information Systems on algorithms for the finding of densest subgraphs.
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Mercer
Stochastic Modelling
Fixed-term Summer project, stochastically modelling mortalities for a new retirement income product.
Service
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Buckley's Chance
Founding Editor
Establishing an Australia-centric online publication for clear and accessible communication of quantitative topics in the public interest.
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newDemocracy Foundation
Research & Computational Support
Building an accessible online tool for performing stratified random selection.
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Future Problem Solving Program Australia
Moderniser of Evaluator Resources
Provided technical advice on the adoption/creation of an electronic evaluation platform. Previously, I rewrote the Evaluator Handbook.
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Australian Cancer and Health Sciences Competition Inc.
Director
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iGEM UniMelb
Videographer
Produced three short videos to help explain and promote the work of the team from The University of Melbourne entering the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition.
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St Leonard's College
Peer Support Leader
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St Leonard's College
SCOPE Leader
Mentored an overly reserved grade three student.
Awards & Honours
- 2019
Mathematics and Statistics School Scholarship
The University of Melbourne
- 2018
Maurice H. Belz Scholarship
The University of Melbourne
- 2016
Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) Scholar
Biomedical Research Victoria
Leaders in Communities Award (LiCA)
The University of Melbourne
- 2015
Keith Frampton Roll of Honour (Member)
Future Problem Solving Program Australia
Highest Mark, Weather & Climate Systems
The University of Melbourne
- 2014
Second Place, Introductory Microeconomics Film Competition
The University of Melbourne
- 2013
Year 12 IB Dux
St Leonard's College
Full College, Music and House Colours
St Leonard's College
Old Collegian's Award for Positive Involvement
St Leonard's College
- 2012
Monash Prize for Excellence & Year 11 IB Dux
St Leonard's College
E. Paul Torrance Youth Award
Future Problem Solving Program Australia
Grants & Funding
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Augmenting Corpus Analysis through Argument Mining and Networked Notes
Artificial Intelligence for Decision Making Initiative (Phase 1)
Sponsor Office of National Intelligence, Commonwealth of Australia
Value $20,000
Publications
Journal Articles
Towards Argument Embeddings
L Thorburn
OHAAI 2(1), 2021.
Accepted.
Tools to Ease the Choice and Design of Protein Crystallisation Experiments
N Rosa, M Ristic, L Thorburn, GJ Abrahams, B Marshall, CJ Watkins, A Kruger, A Khassapov and J Newman
Crystals 10(2), 2020.
Reports
Analytic Rigour in Intelligence
A Barnett, T Primoratz, R de Rozario, M Saletta, L Thorburn and T van Gelder (alphabetical)
Hunt Lab for Intelligence Research, 2021.
Enhancing human analysis of large corpora via argument mining and backlinks—a prototype
L Thorburn
Hunt Lab for Intelligence Research, 2021.
General Press
Symposia
COMMA 2020
8th International Conference on Computational Models of Argument
OnlineEAG
Effective Altrusim Global
London, UKINFORMS-APS 2019
20th INFORMS Applied Probability Society Conference
Brisbane, AustraliaSummer Institute on Topics in the History of Economics
Center for the History of Political Economy, Duke University
Raleigh, USOne of 32 selected to participate in the second week.
NeurIPS 2016
Thirtieth Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems
Barcelona, Spain