19 September 2024: STRATOS Workshop, Leiden, NL

Materials from my 19 September 2024 STRATOS talk:

Profile

I'm an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. I'm originally from the UK, and moved to Canada in 2013 to work as a postdoc at McGill University. I received my PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2012, an MSc (in statistics) from University College London in 2008, and an MA (in mathematics) from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 2007.

Here is a copy of my CV. Sometimes it is up to date.

Research Interests

My primary research interest is in causal inference, with a specific focus on adaptive treatment strategies and precision medicine. My work derives and explores statistical methods that use data to help inform treatment decisions tailored to individual patient characteristics.

I am particularly interested in addressing "real-world" limitations of traditional analysis methods. These range from issues that arise from data collection (such as measurement error and unmeasured confounders), to assumptions about the structure of our data or models (such as interactions between patients), and matters of implementation (how can we involve patients in the decision-making process?).

I also advocate for statistical communication. I have served on the editorial board of the statistics magazine Significance for many years, and am the media representative for the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. I have given interviews on topics including workplace equity data, COVID-19, and the drawing of teams in soccer tournaments. Perhaps most (in)famously, I used stats to help me win a lot of free donuts from a Canadian coffee chain, and have been featured on CBC's The National and CTV's Your Morning.

Beyond statistics I'm a big fan of trivia (especially pub trivia nights), and have appeared on a number of game shows on British television. My other hobbies are on a semi-random rotation between chess, poker, playing the piano, composing music, and video games. I am not very good at any of them.

Talks

Slide decks for selected talks. If you would like materials from another one of my talks, please send me an email!

Materials from my 3 June 2024 SSC Annual Meeting teaching talk:

Materials from my 11 March 2024 ENAR talk:

Materials from my 20 September 2023 McGill EBOH Seminar on making introductory statistics videos:

Materials from my 19 July 2023 ISI World Statistics Congress talk on R Shiny apps exploring measurement error in dynamic treatment regime analyses:

Publications

Some of my more interesting papers:

Methodological papers:

Some introductory/review articles:

My R package for DTR estimation, DTRreg:

...and now for something completely different:

Contact

If you are contacting me with a reference request: please note I only write references for individuals with whom I have directly worked.