Dr Maarit Laaksonen is a Senior Research Fellow in the Cancer Epidemiology Research Unit at the Centre for Big Data Research in Health at UNSW. She is a biostatistician with 12 years’ national and international experience in the field of epidemiology and public health. Her main research focus is on novel methods and applications of disease burden measures and she currently leads an NHMRC project evaluating the population-level relevance of the risk factors for cancer in Australia.