Who we are

Christine Bond is Emeritus Professor in the Division of Applied Health Sciences, University of Aberdeen. Her research interests are in improving the clinically effective and cost effective use of medicines, and the role of the wider health care team, with most research being undertaken in the primary care setting. Her research expertise encompasses the early stages of developing an intervention (systematic reviewing, qualitative approaches, and pilot trials) through to leading definitive randomised controlled trials. She is Editor of the International Journal of Pharmacy Practice and an Editorial Board member of Pilot and Feasibility Studies.

Stephen Bremner is Professor of Medical Statistics at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School and lead statistician at the Brighton and Sussex Clinical Trials Unit. His principal research interests centre on the design and analysis of pragmatic randomised controlled trials of complex interventions in community healthcare settings. He is co-Editor-in-Chief for BMC Pilot and Feasibility Studies. 

Michael Campbell is an Emeritus Professor of Medical Statistics at the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) at the University of Sheffield. He has interests in a wide variety of applications of statistics to health research, including design of complex interventions including cluster randomised trials, statistics in primary care, sample size estimation, time series analysis, health technology assessment, and hospital mortality. Mike is an Editorial Board member of Pilot and Feasibility Studies. He is a former editor of Statistics in Medicine, and formerly a statistical referee for the British Medical Journal.

Claire Chan is a Statistician at the Centre for Evaluation and Methods based at Queen Mary University of London. Claire has current research interests in both cluster randomised trials and pilot and feasibility studies. In particular, Claire has been an Associate Editor of the Pilot and Feasibility Studies journal, and has also been involved in leading several workshops on pilot and feasibility studies. Claire has published papers on the reporting of these studies, including the CONSORT extension for pilot trials.

Saskia Eddy is an Assistant Professor in Medical Statistics at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Saskia has research interests in pilot and feasibility trials, in particular their sample size calculation,  clinical trial methodology and the effective communication of statistics. Saskia is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has been an active member of the NIHR Improving Statistical Literacy research group since its inception. Additionally, she serves as an Associate Editor for Pilot and Feasibility Studies.

Sandra Eldridge is Professor of Biostatistics and Associate Dean for Strategic Developments at Queen Mary University of London. She is also Director of the Pragmatic Clinical Trials Unit. She has research interests in cluster randomised trials, pilot and feasibility studies, and pragmatic trials more generally. She led the work to produce the CONSORT guidelines for pilot randomised trials. She has sat on various funding panels for the National Institute for Health Research and is on the Editorial Board for Pilot and Feasibility Studies.

Sally Hopewell is Professor of Clinical Trials and Evidence Synthesis at the Oxford Clinical Trials Research Unit, University of Oxford. Her key areas of research expertise are in the design, conduct and transparent reporting of randomised trials and systematic reviews. She has published extensively in these areas, and has been instrumental in the development of key reporting guidelines including CONSORT and PRISMA Statements. She has particular research interests in trial registration, data sharing, development of core outcome sets, transparent reporting of trial protocols, pilot trials and trials of complex interventions. She is a member of the advisory board for Current Controlled Trials, a member of the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Clinical Evaluation and Trials Board and member of the NIHR Open Research Advisory Board.

Gillian Lancaster is Professor of Medical Statistics at Keele University’s Institute of Primary Care and Health Sciences. Her research scopes many medical and social applications, with a specific interest in trial methodology, and particularly developing Patient Reported Outcome Measures and other assessment tools primarily for use on children and young people (eg. Alder Hey Triage Pain score, EARLI, MDAT, ADNAT, CLCF). She is part of a global health working group convened by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to develop Indicators for Infant and Young Child Development (WHO IYCD tool), and the Global Scales for Early Development (GSED). She is currently joint Editor in Chief of Pilot and Feasibility Studies.

Martyn Lewis is a Professor in Biostatistics at the School of Medicine, Keele University. Martyn has an interest in clinical trials methodology in particular methods in pilot and feasibility studies. He also has a keen interest in health economics. To date, Martyn has been a successful co-applicant on 28 funded national grants totalling approx. £28million and has over 160 peer-review publications of original research articles published in leading international medical and methodological journals. He is an active reviewer for the Pilot and Feasibility Studies (and other) journals.

Dr Lawrence Mbuagbaw is a Research Methods Scientist and Epidemiologist. He is an associate professor at McMaster University where he teaches courses in biostatistics and randomized trials; associate professor extraordinary of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Stellenbosch University; and research methods scientist in the Research Institute of St Joseph’s Health Care Hamilton (SJHH) where he provides methodological and statistical support for other researchers as the Director of the Research Methodology Centre. This includes research questions formulation, study design, data analysis and reporting. He is also the principal investigator of numerous research projects covering a wide variety of research designs including evidence syntheses, randomized trials, mixed-methods studies, and qualitative studies. Lawrence is a senior editor on Pilot and Feasibility Studies, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) and on the editorial board of Contemporary Clinical Trials and Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods.

Katie Mellor is a Medical Research Council funded DPhil student at the University of Oxford, under the supervision of PAFS group members Sally Hopewell and Sandra Eldridge. Her DPhil focuses on how pre-specified progression criteria can inform the decision to proceed from an external pilot to definitive RCT. Katie is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, current student representative for the NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership (TMRP), and participates in two TMRP groups; trial conduct and trial outcomes. Katie is also the student representative for the Oxford MRC-DTP student cohort.

Dr Clare Robinson is a Senior Lecturer in Medical Statistics within the Pragmatic Clinical Trials Unit and is deputy lead of the Methodology Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London. Her career spans over 20 years working in academic clinical trials units.   She has research interests in cluster randomised trials and trials where clustering develops post randomisation, as a result of the intervention delivery.  She is passionate about developing and supporting early career researchers through PhD supervision, mentorship, intern supervision and through teaching and leadership.  She is the statistical lead on several pilot and feasibility studies and supervises PhD students researching the methodology of pilot and feasibility designs.  

Julius Sim is Professor of Health Care Research in the School of Medicine at Keele University. He has a background in sociology, applied statistics and philosophy. Julius’s main interests are in research ethics and in both qualitative and quantitative research methodology, including clinical trials, pilot and feasibility studies, and qualitative synthesis, as well as issues of consent in specific research designs (e.g. pilot and feasibility studies, adaptive trials, cluster trials, natural experiments and focus groups). He is a Chartered Statistician and a member of the Complex and Alternative Consent Trials Working Group within the MRC-NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership.

Chris Sutton is a Professor of Clinical Trials in Lancashire Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Lancashire, Preston UK.  He has over 25 years’ experience as a statistician and trial methodologist, designing, analysing and reporting numerous feasibility and definitive trials, many of which have been funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).  He has also been a member of the funding committee for the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Commissioning Committee since 2020.  His methodological research and expertise are in the areas of pilot and feasibility trials and trial conduct.  In the former, he was a member of the consensus group that produced the CONSORT guidelines for pilot randomised trials, and has researched methods for sample size determination for feasibility trials.  In trial conduct, he is a former co-lead of the MRC-NIHR Research Partnership’s Trial Conduct Working Group’s Retention Topic Group and continues to be an active member of the Trial Forge Study Within A Trial (SWAT) Group, including the promotion of the initiation and replication of SWATs. 

Dr. Lehana Thabane is a Vice President of Research at St Joseph’s Healthcare—Hamilton; Scientific Director of the Research Institute at St Joseph’s Healthcare; Professor of Biostatistics and Former Interim Chair/Associate Chair of the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact; Associate Member of the Departments of Pediatrics, Medicine, Family Medicine, Surgery, Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, and Anesthesia, School of Nursing, and School of Rehabilitation Science, in the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) at McMaster University. He is an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute, Fellow of the American Statistical Association, Fellow of the Society for Clinical Trials, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and Honorary Foreign Associate Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. Dr Thabane is the joint Editor-in-Chief of the journal Pilot and Feasibility Studies; and he is a member of the editorial board for many journals including Trials, and Clinical Trials. He is the President-Elect of the Society for Clinical Trials for 2020-2021.