Developmental epidemiology, measurement and models

My career has passed through universities in the UK and US and has spanned natural, social and medical sciences. A spell as statistician in Michael Rutter’s MRC Unit at the Institute of Psychiatry from 1986 to 1998 gave rise to long-term collaborations with Catherine Lord, Emily Simonoff, Tony Charman and many other exceptional scientists and clinical colleagues, largely on children, particularly those with autism. A collaboration with Sophia Rabe-Hesketh also led to the development of the gllamm program and the framework for multilevel generalized structural equation modelling. As Head of KCL Dept Biostatistics I oversaw its merger with Health Informatics and as Director of KCL’s Clinical Trials Unit oversaw it’s expansion from a specialist mental health to an all disease Unit. Much of my methodological work has dealt with longitudinal models for developmental data and the many and varied impacts of measurement error and how these can be overcome.  I am a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and British Academy, and an NIHR Senior Investigator.