London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The School's rich heritage in medical statistics is entering a new era with the launch of a centre which brings together its methodological expertise under one umbrella.

More than 60 years after Austin Bradford Hill - recognised as the “father of medical statistics” - completed his pioneering work at the School, the Centre for Statistical Methodology is opening for business.

Staff with statistical and methodological expertise from across LSHTM will collaborate, support and undertake research with those involved in clinical trials, epidemiology, sociology, health economics and all other disciplines related to public health.

The Centre is organised in research themes that include analysis of clinical trials, causal inference, design of observational studies, measurement error and survival analysis.

Regular seminars and events will be held at the Centre, as well as an annual forum where methodological problems will be discussed and solutions demonstrated.

Centre Director Professor Bianca De Stavola, head of the Department of Medical Statistics, said: “I’m extremely excited about the Centre.

“We have a lot of methodological expertise at the School but we hope it will become more visible now.

“People who use statistics without being statisticians should find the Centre particularly useful.”

Renowned statistician and pioneer of important contributions such as the proportional hazards model and the Cox process, Professor Sir David Cox, of Nuffield College, Oxford, will mark the launch with a talk on: Some current and potential issues for medical statistics”.

Professor Peter Piot, Director of LSHTM, will also attend the launch event on April 7 in the John Snow Lecture Theatre in Keppel Street, London.