Summary
Vern is an Emeritus Programme Leader at the MRC Biostatistics Unit. Vern was a Programme Leader at the BSU from 2001 - 2016, and was also acting Director during 2011. Prior to moving to BSU in 2001, Vern held professorial positions at the University of Washington, the University of Waterloo and University College London. He has published widely in the statistical and medical literature and is co-author of the five editions of the book "Using and Understanding Medical Statistics". From 2007 to 2013, he was an Editor of "Statistics in Medicine".
Vern's research has focused on the analysis of data collected longitudinally to address multiple questions related to the course of particular diseases. Particular aspects of this work are the development of analysis methods, with a particular emphasis on two-part models, that account for the correlation of observation from a single subject over time, often through random effects models, and the use of multi-state structures to appropriately model change in disease over time.
Vern played a crucial role in the inception of its annual flagship workshop named after the pioneering statistician Professor Peter Armitage, and has continued to significantly contribute to the successful workshop series. Vern has also written extensively about the history of the Unit and its role in the development of medical statistics in the UK.
