Simon is a postgraduate research student on a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) funded PhD. He is a member of the Biostatistics, Evidence Synthesis, Test Evaluation And prediction Modelling (BESTEAM) group at University of Birmingham, and an honorary contract holder within the Ophthalmology and AI division at University Hospitals Birmingham.

Simon’s PhD research is on methods to estimate and evaluate components of variability from pre-existing datasets containing repeated biomarker measurements taken on subjects over time, such as routine databases. Unlike when conducting prospective longitudinal Biological Variability Studies (BVS), pre-existing datasets rarely contain the necessary data required for methods commonly used in longitudinal BVS. Methods that address the limitations of using pre-existing datasets have important implications to investigating how components of variability can be estimated and evaluated retrospectively.

Prior to starting his PhD, Simon worked at University Hospitals Birmingham in a collaborative role with the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EACTS) chaired by Professor Domenico Pagano, providing technical and statistical support to Quality Improvement Programmes (QUIPs). Simon was also a member of a joint Cancer and Genomics-Health Informatics Research group chaired by Mr Prashant Patel, providing statistical support to projects, several of which have now been published.