MRC Industrial CASE PhD Studentship New methods for estimating treatment effects in trials that use adaptive seamless designs



Applications are invited for a 4 year PhD studentship at Warwick Medical School (WMS), University of Warwick, UK. The studentship is funded jointly by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Novartis Pharma AG, Basel, Switzerland.

The project:

In this studentship, the focus will be point estimation of treatment effects. Methods for point and interval estimation that adjust for treatment selection have been proposed by several authors. However, most authors consider normally distributed outcomes while a few consider binary outcomes. In this project, we will consider survival outcomes which have not been thoroughly investigated with respect to treatment selection bias. Survival outcomes are important and common in medical research such as in oncology. During the studentship, new point estimators that adjust for treatment selection will be developed.

Supervisors: The student will have supervision from WMS and Novartis. The supervisors at WMS will be Dr Peter Kimani and Professor Nigel Stallard and the supervisors at Novartis will be Dr Ekkehard Glimm and Professor Frank Bretz.

Awards available: 1 award available

Funding Details:

Due to funding restrictions this joint studentship between MRC and Novartis includes full tuition fees for an EU/UK application and an annual tax-free stipend of approximately £16,200. The student will be based at WMS and will enrol on the WMS postgraduate student training programme. Registration will initially be for an MPhil degree. Upgrade registration for a PhD in Health Sciences will follow presentation of a satisfactory report at the end of the first year. Over the 4 years, the student will spend at least a total of 3 months at Novartis in order to meet the industry supervisors and to discuss the relevance of the research to real trials.

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Candidates should have a good honours degree (2.1 or above) or a higher degree including a substantial component of mathematics and/or statistics and must satisfy the MRC Industrial case studentship eligibility requirements (see http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Fundingopportunities/Applicanthandbook/Studentships/Eligibility/index.htm ). An interest in clinical trials is essential.

Eligibility: Due to funding restrictions this is open to Home/EU applicants only.

Length of Award: 4 years (PhD)

Application Details: To apply please complete the online application form (https://postgrad.warwick.ac.uk/SWIFT/pgapp/login.asp) indicating that you are applying for the MRC Industrial Case Studentship on New methods for estimating treatment effects in trials that use adaptive seamless designs supervised by Dr Peter Kimani.

Additionally please provide a CV and covering letter by post or e-mail, including two referees to:

Dr Peter Kimani

Warwick Medical School

University of Warwick

Coventry CV4 7AL, UK

(E-mail: peter.k-u.kimani@warwick.ac.uk )

For further details or informal discussion of this studentship, please contact Peter Kimani (peter.k-u.kimani@warwick.ac.uk ).

Deadline:  30 September 2013

The expected start date is:  1 October 2013.

We reserve the right to close this studentship early once we have received sufficient applications and therefore encourage you to apply early to avoid disappointment.

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