1.How did you get interested in statistics?

My degree in mathematics first introduced me to the world of statistics, leading me to do an MSc where I learnt about the medical application and I knew it was what I wanted to do.

2. Describe your career path so far.

I started my career at Bangor University Trials Unit then moving over to the University of Sheffield in a similar position. I have recently put these experiences into practice and have funding to complete a PhD in clinical trial methods and analysis.

3. What have been your career highlights?

Every time I get funding or a publication approved it feels like a massive highlight.

4. What challenges have you faced?

Every new study can feel like a challenge, especially if it is a new methodology but this is part of the excitement.

5. What type of skills you use in your job?

Communication skills, technical skills and organisational skills I would say are the most important.

6. What do you do in a typical week?

A week can be so varied, it is usually made up of a mixture of meetings to keep up with ongoing projects, discussions about potential new projects and then completing analysis for those already coming to an end.

7. What do you find most interesting or motivating about your job?

Seeing the results of a study being reporting and potentially changing practice for the benefit of patients is such a motivating factor of this job.

8. What advice would you give to someone considering statistics as a career?

Statistical jobs are made up of lots of different skills and so can attract a range of people and this is one of the most enjoyable things of the job when you can learn from others and share strengths.

1.How did you get interested in statistics?

I liked maths at school but have to admit to finding statistics a challenge when I first came across it at secondary school.  It was only when I saw statistics being used in the context of medical research (first at medical school and then in the third year at university) that my interest was really ignited.

2. Describe your career path so far.

It was a slow process because I didn’t know that biostatistics existed.  I liked data and I liked data that was related to health.  I wanted a career that would help others.  I thought I wanted to be a doctor but realised at medical school that that wasn’t quite what I wanted to do.  I left, worked for a while, went to university to do computing, changed at year one to maths and computing, then changed again to computing, operational research and statistics.  I then worked as a research assistant at the Western Ophthalmic hospital on a project funded by Guide Dogs and whilst doing that I chose to do a part time MSc in medical statistics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.  I then worked for a long time at Moorfields Eye Hospital – as medical statistician, then senior medical statistician and finally principal medical statistician – initially a university post which then became an NHS post.  I moved to King’s in 2016 as a Reader in Medical Statistics to work under Professor Janet Peacock a key founder of the NIHR Statistics Group.  I returned to the NHS in December 2020.

3. What have been your career highlights?

Becoming a medical statistician at Moorfields Eye Hospital was a dream coming true as was being appointed a Reader in Medical Statistics at King’s.  Re-joining the NHS in 2020 – an organisation with a clear primary focus on helping those in need, is another.

4. What challenges have you faced?

A lack of understanding of the value of applied medical statistics and the skills that we need in order to do our jobs well.

5. What type of skills you use in your job?

Clearly mathematical skills but also communication, logical thinking and pragmatism.

6. What do you do in a typical week?

I help researchers design their studies.  I write and review statistical analysis plans for studies.  I review standard operating procedures.  I teach statistical concepts to non statisticians and teach more advanced statistical techniques to junior statisticians with our team.  I write and review research papers.

7. What do you find most interesting or motivating about your job?

The thing that I find most motivating is knowing that the work I am doing will translate into benefit for those in need in some way.

8. Who has influenced you most up to now?

Different people at different times in my life.

9. If you could change one thing in the world of health research, what would it be?

I would like to see patients placed first always.

10. What advice would you give to someone considering statistics as a career?

Do it if it makes you happy.

Name: Simon Bond

Job title: Senior Statistician

Institution: Cambridge Clinical Trials Unit

Link to NIHR : Early Phase Trials group, and steering committee

1. How did you get interested in statistics?

Inspired by a great lecturer during my maths undergrad degree

2. Describe your career path so far.

Stats MSc. 2 years in a hospital statistician role at Mount Vernon, PhD at Warwick, post doc at MRC BSU, 4 years in Pharma, Current job at Cambridge CTU

3. What have been your career highlights?

Waking up to the radio mentioning a study I’d worked on in its news report. Helping to set up NIHR early phase studies group. Solving problems generally gives a sense of contributing to society ultimately.

4. What challenges have you faced?

Balancing time vs quality.  Learning how to delegate and manage a team.

5. What type of skills you use in your job?

Communication, logic, programming, visual presentations.

6. What do you do in a typical week?

As per most jobs, I answer a lot of emails. Contribute to grant applications for new studies, help set up such studies – protocols, data collection, stats analysis plans. Generally I oversee the analysis and interim reporting stages now, rather than directly carry them out.  Carve out time to attend seminars or read methodology papers. Try to improve working practices in the longer term, to make steps more efficient and a higher quality.

7. What do you find most interesting or motivating about your job?

When I have to try or learn something new and apply it for the first time, be that a software tool or piece of methodology or trial design or…

8. Who has influenced you most up to now?

Fisher having invented most of the principles behind statistics. Nelder I think has been a great influence in a similar vein, somewhat in the background though.

1. How did you get interested in biostatistics?

My career path is quite straightforward (and boring!). My undergraduate degree was in maths and statistics emerged as my favourite part. I then did a postgraduate degree in statistics, which exposed me to different types of statistics, and medical statistics was the one I wanted to keep doing.

2. Who has influenced you most up to now?

Nick Fieller was responsible for steering me towards statistics as an undergrad at the University of Sheffield. The MSc course in statistics was his passion and I’m very grateful to have been a part of it.

3. What have been your career highlights and challenges?

The challenges are the highlights. The challenges are the problems I identify and the highlights are understanding these problems and presenting alternatives.

4. If you could change one thing in the world of health research, what would it be?

I would like to see more funding for methods research.

5. What advice would you give to someone considering statistics as a career?

Do it! There is so much you can do as a statistician, from the applied side to the theoretical, there are plenty of opportunities. You will never be bored (or lacking work).

6. What do you do every day as a statistician? Is there a typical day? If not give a flavour of what you did in a couple of days this week

Some days I’m in the office analysing data, writing code or writing up results. Some days I’m in meetings and I might be consulting or collaborating on new projects or analyses. Some days I’m at conferences presenting my work and meeting fellow statisticians or applied health researchers. Other days I’m teaching and interacting with new doctors and mathematicians.

7. What do you find most interesting in the job?

Nothing stands still, there are always new problems.

8. What motivates you as a statistician?

The work we do makes a difference.

9. Do you ever have a day when you don’t learn anything?

Not really, sometimes you don’t think you will but you invariably do.

10. What are the type of skills you use in your job?

The obvious ones are analytical and technical skills; however, I think communication is the most important skill as a statistician, followed by integrity, scepticism and persistence.

11. Are there different types of medical statistician? What sort of statistician are you?

You could say there are trial statisticians, teaching statisticians, methodologist statisticians and applied statisticians but I think most statisticians do a bit of all of these rolls; I certainly do.

Job title: Associate Professor in Applied Statistics

Institution: University of Bristol

Based in the Nutrition Theme of Bristol Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), member of the Steering Committee and Career Development Lead within the NIHR Statistics Group, member of the Statistics Workstream within the NIHR Methodology Incubator.

 1. How did you get interested in statistics?

My maths degree at the University of Sheffield turned into a degree in probability and statistics due to the options I had selected, and the ones I enjoyed most were related to medical statistics.  I then went on to do an MSc in Biometry at the University of Reading, followed by a PhD in Epidemiology.

2. Describe your career path so far.

I spent the first seven and a half years of my career as a statistician at the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton.  This included undertaking my PhD part-time, plus substantial periods of time were based in various medical research centres in India.  I was then appointed a Research Fellow in Statistics at the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC – University of Bristol) for two years full-time then two years part-time.  Since 2007 I have been a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, then Associate Professor at Bristol Dental School which includes the Nutrition Theme of Bristol BRC, working part-time (50 to 80% full-time equivalent).  Although I have worked across a number of different areas, my main research interests are (i) lifecourse determinants of health, in particular body composition, (ii) physical activity and sedentary behaviour, and (iii) oral health research.  My main teaching interest is making statistics accessible to non-statisticians, particularly undergraduate and postgraduate dental students, and I lead the theme of Evidence-Based Practice within Bristol Dental School undergraduate curriculum.

3. What have been your career highlights?

There have been several highlights of my career so far, many of them occurring during my work in India.  The most bizarre moment was when I needed to find a power source for my laptop to enter the body composition data we had just collected in people’s homes for an inter-observer study.  I ended up sitting in a tiny open-fronted sweet shop being watched by many of the children from around the neighbourhood – certainly not something I would have thought could happen to a statistician! More recently I was a co-applicant on two successful grant applications to study oral health in children in Australia, which will enable me to experience being a visiting academic to the University of Adelaide (if Covid-19 allows!).

My greatest teaching achievement to date has been to transform the provision of statistics teaching in Bristol Dental School.  I have done this through designing and running a quantitative research methods course that uses innovative methods and is very well-received by dental undergraduate students.

4. What challenges have you faced?

A continual challenge is to find time to fit everything in, as there are so many interesting research ideas, teaching and other opportunities, but nowhere near enough hours in the day to pursue even a small proportion of them.  It is particularly tricky as a methodologist to support clinicians and others who need our expertise, while at the same time building our own careers.

5. What type of skills you use in your job?

In addition to statistical skills, the main things I need to be able to do are communicate well both orally and in writing, supervise students and staff, and manage my time effectively.

6. What do you do in a typical week?

My time is juggled between a wide variety of research, teaching, management and administrative tasks, and there’s no such thing as a typical day/week which is one of the reasons I enjoy it.  For example, last week I attended planning meetings for both an RfPB and renewal of our Nutrition Theme (Bristol BRC), wrote an exam paper (maths for clinicians), led an internal panel providing feedback on a progression application within Bristol Dental School, and undertook some training for running online interviews for prospective dental students, among other things.

7. What do you find most interesting or motivating about your job?

I find it very satisfying to be able to use my expertise to help non-statisticians understand statistics, and also contribute to improving the application of statistical methods to medical research.

8. Who has influenced you most up to now?

Lots of people have influenced and inspired me over the years, including Prof Hazel Inskip who was my very first line manager at the University of Southampton, and also Prof Andy Ness who has helped me shape my career since starting work at the University of Bristol in 2003.

9. If you could change one thing in the world of health research, what would it be?

It should be a requirement for all journals to send their articles to a statistician for review, as too many published findings are based on inappropriate analysis methods or have not be interpreted correctly.

10. What advice would you give to someone considering statistics as a career?

It’s important to start by gaining experience of a range of statistical methods, types of studies and clinical areas.  However, as your career progresses you should aim to find your own niche area, else you may feel you are being pulled in too many directions at once.  However this can be very challenging, and I’m still not completely sure what my niche area is!

1.How did you get interested in statistics?

Nicola Crichton ran an undergraduate medical statistics module at the University of Exeter and Deborah Ashby came to give an ‘inspirational lecture’. It sounded a lot more interesting than the obvious alternatives in finance or manufacturing.

2.Describe your career path so far.

I went straight from a first degree in Maths & Stats to the Leicester MSc in Medical Statistics.  After undertaking my dissertation at IARC in Lyons I was appointed to the UK Transplant Service in Bristol to complete a national study of corneal transplantation that had stalled.  My first permanent job a few years later was at the University of Leeds but funded by Leeds General Infirmary to support clinical research.  This was great experience and introduced me rapidly to a vast range of researchers (laboratory, clinical, epidemiological) at all career stages. I moved across the Pennines to Manchester in 1999 to a very similar role at Salford Royal and negotiated a transfer to the University to avoid being in an isolated NHS post.  My career progression since then from a Lectureship has been built primarily on successful multidisciplinary collaborations and exposition of statistical ideas rather than on methodological development.

3.What have been your career highlights?

My top research highlights have to include being introduced to a patient who may well have died if her GP hadn’t just read a Lancet paper from a small collaboration in Leeds that highlighted issues with the most widely prescribed glaucoma medication at the time.  Administratively, my best achievement has been negotiating a unique workforce model that gives job security to our junior research staff.

4.What challenges have you faced?

The recurring challenge is to achieve recognition for academic input to studies: described as a ‘clinical scientist’ by colleagues in mathematical statistics but side-lined as ‘technical’ or ‘support’ by colleagues in the medical faculty. The NIHR has helped methodologists immeasurably. My advice to those starting out would be to ensure that input you have to student supervision, grant applications and papers is always fully recognised at the appropriate level.  Months of work helping a PhD student whose official supervisors can’t help with statistical aspects, grants as ‘named collaborator’ and papers under ‘acknowledgements’ count for nothing on your CV in later years.

5.What type of skills you use in your job?

Logical thinking and communication are essential, as well as all the other inter-personal and time management skills that are too often ignored at interview despite their presence on the list of essential characteristics.

6.What do you do in a typical week?

There’s not really a ‘typical’ week. Last week, for example, I presented to a meeting of local stroke researchers, refereed applications for internal grants to support translational research projects, supported attendees at a grant-writing retreat, marked my MSc students’ dissertations and conducted a mock viva for my PhD student – fingers crossed for the real thing next week!  There’s a lot of ‘routine’ between times – keeping up with progress on collaborative studies and endless administrative emails!

7.What do you find most interesting or motivating about your job?

Working with clinicians and scientists to find ways to answer their real and important questions.

8.Who has influenced you most up to now?

Hard to say ‘most’. There have been numerous positive role models – David Clayton, Chris Rogers, Sheila Bird, David Spiegelhalter, Graham Dunn – and too many clinicians with an infectious passion to name them all. There have also been negative influences that have encouraged caution!

9.If you could change one thing in the world of health research, what would it be?

No more MD degrees. Too often these are undertaken by unsuitable people as an unsuitable passport to a Teaching Hospital post. Those that are worth undertaking would invariably fit MPhil or PhD criteria. The vast majority I have seen, working for NHS Research and Development over nearly three decades, have wasted patient, clinician and hospital resources.

10.What advice would you give to someone considering statistics as a career?

If it suits you, you’ll love it! Even within the specific field of medical statistics in the NHS/University system there is a wide range of opportunities and challenges from methodological development to application and from face-to-face consultancy to computer-based data science.