Nuria Perez-Alvarez

Biostatistician

Professor

Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunication Studies (Open University of Catalonia)

nuria.perez@upc.edu

Biosketch

I am a biostatistician with experience in a variety of research institutes (Institut de Recerca de l’Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, BCNHealth Economics and Outcomes Research and Fundació de Lluita contra la Sida ) and clinical areas, I have developed skills that are particularly effective at designing, planning, analyzing and reporting results from clinical trials and clinical studies. Driven by the nature of the data and the clinical question that has to be solved, adaptation, combination or methological development of the statistical techniques have been required and accomplished.

I am involved in the research projects which include observational and prospective studies, cohorts and clinical trials (mainly Phase III and IV). That has given me experience in the design of studies, sample size calculation, assisting in the protocol writing and in the forms of data collection and in reporting results. In order to answer the clinical questions, taking into consideration the difficulty added by the nature of the data it is necessary to devote the following chores: study about the clinical situation considered, elaborate a detailed state of the art considering both the clinical findings and the statistical methodology, learn about the use of the software and/or implement the code for the calculations to apply the most suitable statistical techniques to the data analysis, data management and data analysis, understand its output and do the translation into clinical information. In the process, a special attention is paid to the missing data and the information that can be under this “empty space”.

The innovation on methological an applied biostatistical research is done in collaboration with clinicians and as a member of a university research groups: The GRASS group, which I join since 2002 and the Biostatistics and bioinformatics group (Emerging research group from 2009 to 2013 and recognized to consolidated research group from 2014) .

In the development of the PhD thesis, I was learning the principles and practices of health economics evaluation and I was dealing with real data applications and cohort simulation performance (Finished at 2014) .

Research areas

Clinical Trials

Longitudinal Data

Pharmacoeconomics

Publication links: ORCID, ResearchID

Twitter: @StatsNuria

Other links: LinkedIn

Education

I hold an MSc on Biostatistics and an MSc and PhD on Statistics and Operational Research.

I have travelled for education and I did 4 scientific visits at: Harvard School of Public Health, Boston (2009), Departamento de Demografía, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid (2006), World Health Organization, Geneva (2006) and at Sheffield University, Sheffield (2000-2001).

Teaching

Currently I am professor at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, coordinating and designing courses on statistics at different degrees and masters. I organize and participate in dissemination of statistical activities addressed to teenagers and high school professors.

I have been teaching 2 hours per a week at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) from 2006 to 2022. I participated in the course on Longitudinal data analysis in the MSc on Statistics and Operational Research and in the course of Probability and Statistics in the Bachelor Degree in Informatics Engineering.

I use to supervise the final MSc research works of 5-6 students every academical year in the MSc on Bioinformatics and Biostatistics at the Open University of Catalonia.

Current editorial

Member of the Editorial Board of the ‘Clinical Drug Investigation’ (since 22^nd September 2014).

Referee for papers submitted to ‘Clinical Drug Investigation’.

Referee for papers submitted to ‘Trials’.

Referee for papers submitted to ‘Medicina Clínica’.

Other

Member of the International Biometric Society Social Media committee (since 2022).

Member of the Board of the ‘Societat Catalana d’Estadística’ (since 14^th December 2016).