Our People at School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences

Professor Andrew Francis, Deputy Dean

Professor Francis joined Western Sydney in 2000 after studying at the Universities of NSW and Sydney, and a postdoctoral position at the University of Virginia.  He began his role as Deputy Dean in 2020 after serving as Director of the Centre for Research in Mathematics and Data Science (2015-2019), and a period as an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2011-2014).

Professor Francis’s research is mainly in applications of discrete and combinatorial mathematics to problems in biology.  His training is in pure mathematics (specifically algebra), and the applications he works have chiefly been to phylogenetics, epidemiology, bacterial genome structure, and statistics.  In addition to his ARC Future Fellowship, he has held four ARC Discovery Projects.  He has served on the Council of the Australian Mathematical Society (2012-14), on the ARC Research Evaluation Committee for the 2015 and 2018 Excellence in Research for Australia exercises, and is currently a member of the ARC College of Experts (2018-2020).