Dr Mohammed is committed to contributing more towards the bioinformatics work in The UnitDr Nuredin Mohammed joined MRCG as a Biostatistician in August 2016. Before joining The Unit, he worked as a research fellow for the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) design services at the University of Birmingham where he completed his PhD training.

His thesis looked into the potential acute health effects of air pollution in time series studies in relation to daily changes and short-term exposure patterns. After leaving the University, he was offered an Honorary Research Fellowship (HRFs) and collaborates with scientists with diverse interests including occupational and environmental epidemiology and analysing large datasets such as the UK Biobank data. He has also supervised postgraduate students.

Nuredin is not new to The Unit. He spent his Tropical Epidemiology Group (TEG) / London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) fellowship at MRCG in 2010 after completing an MSc in Medical Statistics at the LSHTM. Previously he qualified in statistics from Addis Ababa University and worked for the Central Statistics Office in Ethiopia.

His Biostatistician role at The Unit involves helping scientists in the design, analysis and preparation of scientific reports for clinical, epidemiological and laboratory-based studies. In addition, he contributes to the development of research proposals/ protocols by providing statistical expertise and leads statistics training for staff and postgraduate students based in The Unit.

Dr Mohammed is involved in various studies including clinical trials and cohort studies such as the Iron Hydroxide Adipate Tartrate (IHAT) trial, Influenza Vaccine Immunogenicity and Associations With the Nasopharyngeal Microbiome Among Children in the Gambia (NASIMMUNE) trial and the Pneumococcal Surveillance Project (PSP).

Providing statistics training for staff and students was one of the priorities when Nuredin joined the statistics department. Together with Dr David Jeffries and other colleagues, he has organised and run seven training sessions. Each session was a day and half long and required considerable preparation including writing the necessary course materials and setting up the statistics software. The course reviewed basic concepts and covered common analytical methods in statistics with practical demonstrations using Genestat and Minitab packages.

The training sessions were run in all three main MRCG stations including Fajara, Basse and Keneba. The course received excellent reviews from more than 55 participants who attended so far and additional topics will be covered in the future. Sitting in the higher degrees committee, Nuredin also provides guidance to PhD students on the relevant statistics training they may need as part their studentship.

Nuredin is interested in the application of statistical / mathematical methods in medical research and committed to spend some of his time in training staff and students. He also enjoys programming and plans to contribute more towards the bioinformatics work of The Unit.

Commenting on Dr Mohammed, Dr David Jeffries, Statistics Manager said, “Nuredin brings important research skills based on longitudinal data to the unit. Additionally being a relatively recent post-doc he is in a good position to take a leadership role in the training of master’s and PhD students and sit on the higher degrees committee.”