Nicola Orsini

Development of biostatistical methods for analysis of epidemiological data

My research focuses on biostatistical and epidemiological methods that can substantially improve the analysis of medical data, presentation/communication of the results, and discussion of possible sources of biases. I am very interested in developing and disseminating statistical software components in the form of Stata programs. I believe that software development is an important step, often times overlooked, to increase the chance for health researchers to use modern methods.

Research interests

• Meta-analysis
• Flexible modelling of quantitative covariates
• Multiple imputation of missing data
• Sensitivity analysis for biases
• Quantile regression

At the Nutritional Epidemiology Unit I am investigating the relationship between life-style factors and health outcomes primarily based on large population based prospective cohorts.

I also work at the Unit of Biostatistics at IMM with Professor Matteo Bottai on quantile regression for the analysis of bounded outcomes, Laplace regression for uncensored and censored data, and imputation of missing values using a quantile approach.

Teaching experience

Over the last few years I have taught either as main instructor or as teaching assistant, several courses in biostatistics, epidemiology, and the statistical software Stata for a variety of participants (undergraduate, postgraduate, health professionals, clinicians, researchers) for over 1,000 hours.

• Doctoral Programme in Epidemiology, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.
• Doctoral School in Epidemiology for clinicians, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.
• Research School for Family Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.
• Summer School of Modern Methods on Biostatistics and Epidemiology organized by Professors from Harvard School of Public Health and Karolinska Institutet in Italy.

• A complete list of my teaching experience

Distinctions and awards

• 2012 Young Scholar Award from Karolinska Institutet Strategic Program in Epidemiology
• 2010 Young Scholar Award from Karolinska Institutet Strategic Program in Epidemiology
• 2009 Torgny Wännström Prize for the best doctoral thesis in Sweden in the medical field of public health and/or work-related health or illness. Nominations submitted by the medical faculties of the Swedish universities and the Swedish Medical Society.
• 2008 Best teacher for two consecutive years (2007, 2008) within the Postgraduate Education Program in Epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet.

Statistical software components

The statistical software components for Stata® that I develop are freely downloadable from the Stata server or from a large archive created by Boston College Department of Economics, USA.

• Link to the archive

Examples:

• Dose-response meta-analysis
• Sensitivity analysis of epidemiological results

PhD students

• Andrea Bellavia
• Alice Wallin (Co-supervisor)
• Andrea Discacciati (Co-supervisor)
• Viktor Oskarsson (Co-supervisor)
• Camilla Olofsson (Co-supervisor)

Master student

• Alessio Crippa

Selected publications

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• Click here for a complete list of publications