Applied Statistician · Researcher
Richard Aubrey White
Ph.D. in Biostatistics, Harvard University
Richard leads the Norwegian Syndromic Surveillance System (NorSySS) at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, developing real-time systems to monitor population health and detect outbreaks across Norway's five million residents.
His work focuses on syndromic surveillance, signal-detection algorithms, and the design of real-time reporting systems for public-health operations. Combining statistical modeling with operational epidemiology, he builds the infrastructure that supports health authorities nationwide.
From 2015 to 2022 he was statistical lead for the Norwegian Mortality Monitoring System (NorMOMO), running weekly all-cause mortality analyses for Norway and contributing to the European monitoring system for total mortality (EuroMOMO).
Scientific Production
Selected Experience
Researcher / Project Manager
Norwegian Institute of Public Health
2023–NOW · REMOTE
Leads Norway's national syndromic surveillance; sets statistical methodology and alerts health authorities to outbreaks in real time.
Health Officer
Norwegian Red Cross (IFRC)
2022 · COLOMBO, SRI LANKA
Head statistician for a 3,100-household nationwide needs assessment during the country's humanitarian emergency.
Community-Based Surveillance Delegate
Norwegian Red Cross (IFRC)
2019 · BEIRA, MOZAMBIQUE
Responded to the cholera outbreak after Cyclone Idai; ran a real-time surveillance system across Red Cross oral-rehydration points.
Statistician
Palestinian National Institute of Public Health
2017–2019 · RAMALLAH, PALESTINE
Trained local staff in data management and statistical programming for the national maternal- and child-health registry.
GIS Expert / Data Manager
World Health Organization
2015 · KAMBIA, SIERRA LEONE
Responded to the Ebola epidemic — built and ran a real-time surveillance system linking treatment centers, care centers and burials.
Biostatistician
World Health Organization
2011 · GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
Produced Global Burden of Disease (GBD 2010) prevalence estimates — vision loss, micronutrient deficiency and stunting — across all UN member states.
Flagship Projects
NorSySS
Project Manager · 2023–now
Norway's national syndromic surveillance system — 100+ syndromes from GP and out-of-hours consultations, with 1,000,000+ automated analyses daily across every municipality.
Core Surveillance 9 (cs9)
Lead Developer · 2014–now
Open-source R framework for building real-time surveillance systems — scheduled analysis, automated reporting and alerting, reproducible by design. The backbone of NorSySS and Sykdomspulsen.
Sykdomspulsen
Technical Lead · 2019–2023
Award-winning national platform built with an 8-person team; 1,000+ daily reports spanning mortality (EuroMOMO), COVID-19 and 80+ infectious-disease syndromes.
Key Publications
Education
Harvard University
Ph.D. in Biostatistics · 2011–2012
M.A. in Biostatistics · 2009–2011, Frank Knox Fellowship
University of Wollongong
B. Adv. Mathematics · 2005–2009, First Class Honours
University of Bergen
Nordic languages & literature · 2022–2023, one-year program
Technical Skills & Languages
Professional Experience
Norwegian Institute of Public Health
Researcher / Project Manager — NorSySS
- Project manager for NorSySS, surveilling infectious diseases from general-practitioner and out-of-hours primary-care consultations.
- Complex statistical analyses run automatically for every location in Norway, producing reports and alerting stakeholders.
- Organized the 2023 Northern European Symposium on Automated Surveillance.
R · Kubernetes · Docker/Podman · CI/CD · Apache Airflow · cs9
Researcher / Technical Lead — Sykdomspulsen
- Technical lead for the award-winning Sykdomspulsen platform (8-person team), a real-time analysis and surveillance system.
- Owned training, mentoring, supervision and quality assurance of statistical methods and code.
- Surveillance areas: all-cause / cause-specific / attributable mortality (part of EuroMOMO), COVID-19, influenza, tuberculosis, IPD, meningococcal disease, pertussis, antibiotic use, and 80+ syndromes via NorSySS.
- 1,000,000+ analyses per day; 1,000+ automatic reports per day (PDF / Excel / email / SMS).
R · Kubernetes · Docker/Podman · CI/CD · Apache Airflow · cs9
Researcher — Infectious Disease Epidemiology
- Advised outbreak teams and researchers in statistical concepts, methods and programming.
- Statistical supervision of five EPIET fellows and nine Ph.D. students.
- Modeled the 2014 Ebola outbreak's likelihood of reaching Norway and the effectiveness of entry screening; modeled HCV burden in Norwegian people who inject drugs.
- Head statistician for the PEEP (Haydom, Tanzania) and Safer Births Moyo (Muhimbili, Tanzania) randomized trials.
Postdoctoral Researcher — Genes & Environment
- Built database structures integrating questionnaires, lab toxicant concentrations and Illumina microbial data into analysis datasets.
- Investigated the relationship between seasonality, sunlight and suicide; and between gun ownership and completed suicide in the US.
Consortium for Statistics in Disease Surveillance (CSIDS)
Chairperson
- Oversaw the collaboration between statisticians, epidemiologists and researchers developing the open-source R packages used for disease surveillance.
Norwegian Red Cross
Head Statistician (IFRC)
- Head statistician for an 1,800-household nationwide needs assessment responding to the complex humanitarian emergency in Sri Lanka; developed the protocol and analyzed most of the data.
Health Officer (IFRC)
- Head statistician for a 3,100-household nationwide needs assessment (annex) during Sri Lanka's humanitarian emergency; developed the protocol and health-sector questions and analyzed most of the data.
Community-Based Surveillance Delegate (IFRC)
- Responded to the cholera outbreak caused by Cyclone Idai; ran a real-time surveillance system for people with diarrhea visiting Red Cross oral-rehydration points and liaised with the Ministry of Health.
Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food and Environment (VKM)
External Expert — Next-Generation Risk Assessment
- Implementing the statistical protocol to evaluate INVITES-IN, a tool for assessing the internal validity of in-vitro studies.
External Expert — Next-Generation Risk Assessment
- Developed the statistical protocol to evaluate INVITES-IN, a tool for assessing the internal validity of in-vitro studies.
Palestinian National Institute of Public Health (PNIPH)
Statistician
- Trained local staff in data management and statistical programming for the national maternal- and child-health registry over a two-year posting.
- Validated indicators from the newly formed national healthcare-worker registry.
World Health Organization (WHO)
GIS Expert / Data Manager — GOARN
- Responded to the West-African Ebola epidemic; built and ran a real-time surveillance system linking the national emergency number, holding centers, community care centers, treatment centers and burials.
- Geocoded and mapped outbreak data; produced daily situation reports; trained and supervised national and international staff.
Biostatistician — Mortality & Burden of Disease
- Collected cause-of-death data from national registries and calculated avoidable-mortality estimates across high-income and developing countries.
- Produced Global Burden of Disease (GBD 2010) prevalence estimates — vision loss, micronutrient deficiency and stunting — for all UN member states.
Biostatistician — Stop TB Department
- Managed, cleaned and analyzed MDR-TB datasets from South Africa, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh and Peru.
- Provided recommendations for the WHO Guidelines for the Programmatic Management of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (3rd ed.) via multi-cohort survival analyses.