Nicola Orsini

Nicola Orsini

Principal Researcher | Docent
Visiting address: Solnavägen 1 E, 11365 Stockholm
Postal address: K9 Global folkhälsa, K9 GPH Liljas, 171 77 Stockholm
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About me

  • Researcher and teacher of statistical sciences in the fields of medical and global public health sciences.

    Nicola Orsini, Ph.D. is Principle Researcher, Associate Professor of Medical Statistics, and Head of the Biostatistics Team at the Department of Global Public Health, Karolinska Institutet. Dr. Orsini has worked for more than 15  years on development and application of quantitative methods widely used in medical and epidemiological research, including dose-response meta-analysis, sensitivity analysis, time-to-event analysis, quantile analysis, and intervention time-series analysis, leading to the publication of more than 250 research articles (H-index=79, i10-index=174).

    His awards include the 2009 Torgny Wännström Prize for the best doctoral thesis in the field of public health from the Swedish Medical Association. In recognition of exceptional research performance demonstrated by multiple highly cited papers, Dr. Orsini has been named by Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) among the world's most top-cited (top 1%) scientists whose research leads the world in the field of Social Science for seven consecutive years (2017-2023).

    He developed, documented, and freely shared several statistical software components in the Stata language. Dr. Orsini is a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. In 2020 Dr. Orsini has been elected member of the Society of Research Synthesis Methodology. He served in the Executive Board of the Strategic Research Program in Epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet between 2015 and 2021.

    2023 Highly Cited Researcher. My research ranks among the top 1% most cited works in the Cross Field. Clarivate Analytics. Web of Science.

    2022 Highly Cited Researcher. My research ranks among the top 1% most cited works in the field of Social Sciences. Clarivate Analytics. Web of Science.

    2021 Highly Cited Researcher. My research ranks among the top 1% most cited works in the field of Social Sciences. Clarivate Analytics. Web of Science.

    2020 Highly Cited Researcher. My research ranks among the top 1% most cited works in the field of Social Sciences. Clarivate Analytics. Web of Science.

    2020 Elected Member of the Society of Research Synthesis Methodology.

    2019 Highly Cited Researcher. My research ranks among the top 1% most cited works in the field of Social Sciences. Clarivate Analytics. Web of Science.

    2018 Highly Cited Researcher. My research ranks among the top 1% most cited works in the field of Social Sciences. Clarivate Analytics. Web of Science.

    2017 Highly Cited Researcher. My research ranks among the top 1% most cited works in the field of Social Sciences. Clarivate Analytics. Web of Science.

    2012 Young Scholar Award from the Karolinska Institutet's Strategic Program in Epidemiology. Development of novel procedures in epidemiology: A percentiles-based approach to analyse continuous outcomes.

    2010 Young Scholar Award from the Karolinska Institutet's Strategic Program in Epidemiology. Developing user-friendly statistical methods for health researchers.

    2009 Torgny Wännström Prize. For the best doctoral thesis in the medical field of public health. Nominations submitted by the medical faculties of the universities and the Swedish Medical Society's research mission appoints award winner.

Research

  • He is best known for his work on dose-response meta-analysis based on observational and experimental findings. A book chapter on this topic is with Donna Spiegelman, Professor Emerita of Epidemiologic Methods at Harvard School of Public Health. Handbook of Meta-Analysis, Chapman & Hall/CRC Handbooks of Modern Statistical Methods, 2020). Another book chapter with Professors Susanna C. Larsson (KI) and Georgia Salanti (University of Bern) is available in Systematic Reviews in Health Research: Meta-Analysis in Context. The Third Edition. 2022.

    2025 KI's pedagogical grant 

    • Simulation-based teaching and learning statistics in educational programs

    Current doctoral student

    • Robert Theismeier - Statistical methods for the design, analysis, and interpretation of pooling projects

    Previous doctoral and postdoctoral students

    • Alessio Crippa - Development of novel statistical methods for meta-analysis
    • Andrea Bellavia - A percentile approach to time-to-event outcomes
    • Andrea Discacciati - Risk factors for prostate cancer: analysis of primary data, pooling, and related methodological aspects
    • XingWu Zhou - Methods for intervention time-series analysis

Teaching

  • Master Program in Public Health

    • Course Director "Biostatistics I" (5 weeks)
    • Course Director "Biostatistics II" (5 weeks)

    Doctoral Program in Epidemiology

    • Course Director of "Fundamentals of Stata language" (1 week)
    • Course Director of "Fundamentals of using Python in Health Related Research" (1 week)
    • Course Director of "Biostatistics II: Logistic regression for  Epidemiologists" (1 week, 2 times per year)

Selected publications

Articles

All other publications

Grants

  • Swedish Research Council for Health Working Life and Welfare
    1 January 2025 - 31 December 2027
    Research problem and specific questionsNon-optimal or extreme temperatures negatively affect public health and well-being. Their detrimental impacts are unevenly distributed, with pregnant women and infants bearing a disproportionate burden. Moreover, both the occurrence of temperature extremes, notably heatwaves, and their impacts are projected to increase under future climate change.Taking Sweden as a case-in-point, this project aims:to study the vulnerability to non-optimal and extreme temperatures in pregnant women and infants in Sweden
    to study the role of adaptation to non-optimal and extreme temperatures on maternal and infant health
    to develop scenarios of maternal and infant related health outcomes from plausible future extreme temperatures in Sweden accounting for socio-political dimensions of adaptation processes.Data and methodAccessing novel data resources from Sweden (DOHaD), we will quantify the excess risk of maternal and infant related health outcomes attributed to non-optimal and extreme temperatures. We will include an analysis of historical trends and drivers of the adaptation comparing Sweden with England and Italy-Lombardy Region, a temperate oceanic and a Mediterranean climate country. Leveraging available climate projections, we will also develop scenarios of maternal and infant related health outcomes of plausible future temperature extremes using storylines.Societal relevance and utilisationThis effort is timely: anthropogenically-driven global warming has led to an increased frequency, duration and intensity of heatwaves, a trend that is foreseen to continue in the coming decades. Concurrently, cold spells in several mid-latitude regions continue to be the norm, in part due to enhanced temperature variability. This points to the urgency of reducing the impacts on the most vulnerable, such as pregnant women and infants, by leveraging early-warning systems, and developing new recommendations and long-term adaptation strategies.Plan for project realisationThe project will last 3 years (overall cost 4 999 613 SEK) and consists of 3 WPs. Costs cover salaries (3 675 334 SEK), and communication, travel and overhead (1 324 279 SEK). Raffetti with expertise in public health and epidemiology will lead the project in collaboration with experts in medical, physical and critical social sciences.The project will be part of the Swedish Center for Impacts of Climate Extremes.
  • Swedish Research Council for Health Working Life and Welfare
    1 December 2017 - 30 November 2020
  • Swedish Research Council for Health Working Life and Welfare
    1 January 2017 - 31 December 2022
  • Swedish Research Council for Health Working Life and Welfare
    1 January 2017 - 31 December 2019
  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2016 - 31 December 2018

Employments

  • Principal Researcher, Department of Global Public Health, Karolinska Institutet, 2022-

Degrees and Education

  • Docent, Karolinska Institutet, 2011
  • Degree Of Doctor Of Philosophy, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, 2008
  • Licentiate Degree, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, 2006

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