News

Sofia Villar awarded Frank Hansford-Miller Fellowship

21 May 2025

Congratulations to Programme Leader (MRC Investigator), Sofía Villar, on being the 2025 Frank Hansford-Miller Fellowship holder. The Frank Hansford-Miller Fellowship helps to bring a UK statistician to Australia biennially usually for a period of 2 weeks during which they give a talk and deliver a workshop. The talk this...

Photo of speakers and organisers of Ethics and Innovative Trial Designs workshop

Muti-stakeholder perspectives on Ethics and Clinical Trial Designs

13 May 2025

On Thursday 24th April, the BSU hosted a notable international workshop designed to bring together diverse perspectives on the ethical, regulatory, patient, and methodological issues surrounding the use of adaptive clinical trial designs. The well-attended and insightful event, co-organised with Carnegie Mellon University...

flashfmZero offers insights into the genetic basis of complex health traits

14 April 2025

New research published in Cell Genomics , led by Jennifer Asimit and colleagues, is providing powerful insights into the genetic basis of complex health traits. Often a genetic variant affects a group of health-related traits through a common pathway. Methods that leverage information between traits can identify associated...

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Are NHS health checks for cardiovascular risk too frequent?

27 March 2025

New research reveals that cardiovascular risk assessments should be personalised based on initial individual cardiovascular risk, age, and sex, challenging the current one-size-fits-all approach. cvd_fig.jpeg Identifying optimal intervals for re-assessing cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk is important for ensuring...

BSU PhD student presents at STEM for BRITAIN 2025

20 March 2025

Conor Egan, was selected as a finalist at the STEM for BRITAIN annual scientific poster competition, showcasing the brilliant research and talent of early-career scientists. av8y8779.jpg This prestigious event, held at the UK Parliament, provides a unique platform for researchers to present their work directly to Members...

Mendelian Randomization course turns 10!

21 February 2025

This March marks a significant milestone for the Mendelian randomization (MR) course here at the MRC Biostatistics Unit, as it enters its 10th year. First offered in 2015 as a two day, in-person course, the course is aimed at introducing participants to Mendelian randomization, a statistical technique that uses genetic...

£10m Funding for New Programme to Help Identify Individual Cancer Risk

22 January 2025

Doctors could soon be able to predict your individual chances of getting cancer and offer personalised detection and prevention, thanks to a new research project. Today, Cancer Research UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) are...

BSU Strengthens Ties with Google Through Visiting Researcher Appointment

20 January 2025

Dr Sofia Villar, Programme Leader at the BSU, has been appointed a Visiting Researcher at Google. In this role, she will collaborate with PhD student Amy Lee, fellow Visiting Faculty Researcher Nina Deliu, and a multidisciplinary team of behavioral scientists and computer scientists on the Fitbit team. This collaboration...

Stephen Burgess contributes to Top Cited Article by European Society of Cardiology

8 January 2025

“Mendelian randomization for cardiovascular diseases: principles and applications” , is number 1 in the European Heart Journal Top Cited Articles for 2023. The paper, co-authored by Stephen Burgess at the MRC Biostatistics Unit, Susanna C. Larsson, and Adam Butterworth at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care...

Image of scrable pieces spelling out words 'mental health'

Radical rethink of mental health support for adolescents

19 December 2024

Young people have given important insights into what mental health support they prefer and what does not work for them or meet their needs, as part of a major new study of thousands of adolescents. The new study, led by researchers at the University of Oxford and the MRC Biostatistics Unit, found that adolescents access a...