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Professor Nigel Stallard

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men: experimental design for pre-clinical and clinical trials

Tuesday 20 January 2009

Nigel Stallard was appointed as Professor of Medical Statistics at Warwick Medical School in September 2005 and is currently acting Director of the Health Sciences Research Institute (HSRI).

Following a degree in Mathematics at Cambridge University in 1987, Nigel started his career as a mathematical modeller working for the Royal Air Force, before moving into statistics. He studied part-time for an MSc in the Department of Applied Statistics at the University of Reading before joining the department as a Research Fellow in 1992. He was a founding member of the Medical and Pharmaceutical Statistics Research Unit at the University of Reading and remained there until moving to Warwick.

Nigel's research interests are focused on the statistical design of experiments involving modifications based on the analysis of the data as they accumulate. Within this broad area, he has worked extensively on three areas:

  • The design of animal studies for the assessment of acute toxicity
  • Statistical models for optimal decision-making in early-phase clinical trials
  • Sequential methods for confirmatory clinical trials that involve selection of the best of several experimental treatments

In his inaugural lecture, Nigel will describe some of the challenges in these areas that have led him to be involved in the development of new statistical methodology and in collaborations with experimental scientists and researchers.

Nigel Stallard