Professional Career

Biostatistics & Clinical Trials
11/2022 – now Biostatistics Consulting Director, ICON Plc, Uppsala, Sweden
Function: Statistical consulting of pharma and bio-tech companies in early phase development
01/2018 – 11/2022 Statistical Assessor, Swedish Medical Products Agency, Uppsala, Sweden
Function: Evaluation of statistics and methods of applications for approval of drugs in collaboration with national regulatory agencies and the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
08/2017 – 01/2018 Consultant in Biostatistics (for AstraZeneca), DFIND, Gothenburg, Sweden
Function: Statistics and scientific computing solutions for problems in late-stage drug development
05/2015 – 07/2017 Principal Scientific Computing Specialist, Advanced Analytics Centre, AstraZeneca, Cambridge, Great Britain
Function: Statistics and scientific computing solutions for problems in late-stage drug development
07/2010 – 10/2012 Wilmar Igl Statistical Consulting, Germany, full-time
Function: Freelance consulting statistician and researcher for Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals and other clients
08/2008 – 06/2010 Wilmar Igl Statistical Consulting, Sweden, part-time
Function: Freelance consulting statistician and researcher
01/2006 – 02/2007 Scientific assistant at the Clinical Trials Center, University Hospital of Wuerzburg (Prof. C. Wanner, Ph. D.);
Function: Biometric consulting in research methods and statistics; Vocational training of study nurses, clinical monitors, and investigating physicians; Publication of clinical trials
05/2002 – 03/2006 Scientific assistant in the Rehabilitation Sciences Section, Institute of Psychotherapy and Medical Psychology (Prof. H. Faller, Ph. D.), University of Wuerzburg;
Function:
Research in psychometric criteria of health-related quality of life questionnaires; Method consulting (design, preparation, realization, analysis, and publication of research projects); Vocational training of research assistants; Organization of vocational trainings and congresses; Lecturing seminars in “Medical Psychology” and “Research Methods” for medical students; Method consulting regarding diploma and doctoral thesis in medicine and psychology

Research
04/2013 – 02/2015 Post-doc researcher at the Department of Genetic Epidemiology, Regensburg University, Regensburg (Prof. I. Heid, Ph. D.);
Function: Research in associations between genetic variants (genome-wide) and age-related macular degeneration as a member of the IAMDGC consortium (amdgenetics.org)
08/2008 – 06/2010 Post-doc researcher at the Department of Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala (Prof. U. Gyllensten, Ph. D.);
Function: Research in associations between genetic variants (genome-wide) and medical traits in pedigree-based populations
04/2007 – 3/2008 Post-doc researcher at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm (Prof. P. Lichtenstein, Ph. D.);
Function: Research in associations between genetic variants (candidate genes) and psychological traits in twin family-based populations
09/2002 – 12/2005 Scientific assistant in the rehabilitation research project “Sensitivity to change and responsiveness of generic patient questionnaires in rehabilitation” (Scientific management: Prof. H. Faller, Ph. D.), Rehabilitation Research Network of Bavaria (RFB), Wuerzburg, Germany;
Function: Scientific research; Project management; Data Analysis; Publications and presentations

Vocational Training
07/2003 – 01/2006 Training in Behavioral Therapy as a member of the Society of Behavior Modification “Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Verhaltensmodifikation e. V.”), Bamberg, Germany;
Degree: “Psychologist with Special Training in Behavioral Therapy” (“Verhaltenstherapeutisch qualifizierter Diplom-Psychologe, VtqDP”)
09/2005 – 11/2005 Training in Academic Instruction at the Center of Advanced Training in Academic Instruction of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg; Topics: New methods of didactics in seminars; Working effectively with small groups; Facilitating of group processes; Leading groups; Evaluation of courses; Nonverbal communication on stage;
Degree: “Certificate of Academic Instruction”

Academic Career

  

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. D.)
11/2003 – 05/2007 Topic “Sensitivity to change of questionnaires of health-related quality of life in rehabilitation”, University of Freiburg im Breisgau, (Prof. J. Bengel, Ph. D.; Prof. H. Faller, Ph. D.);

Graduate Studies II
04/2015 Degree “MSc Medical Statistics” (with distinction)
06/2014 – 03/2015 Master thesis in the field of Bayesian statistics/statistical genetics: “Application of Bayesian hierarchical generalized linear models using weakly informative prior distributions to identify rare genetic variant effects on blood pressure” (Prof. John Thompson)
Note: The thesis was awarded with the PSI (Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry) University Prize.
10/2012 – 04/2015 Program of study “Master of Medical Statistics”, University of Leicester, Great Britain

Graduate Studies I
05/2002 Degree “Diplom-Psychologe Univ.”;
05/2001 – 05/2002 Diploma thesis in the field of Cognitive Psychology/Artificial Intelligence: “Complex Problem Solving in multi-agent simulation environments: Studies in formalization of strategies to fight forest fires” (Prof. F. Puppe);
10/1996 – 05/2002 Program of study “Diplom-Psychologie”, University of Wuerzburg; Special subjects: Computer science (esp. Artificial Intelligence); Neuropsychology

Education
06/1995 Degree “Allgemeine Hochschulreife” at the Donau-Gymnasium, Kelheim

Grants, Awards, Honors
12/2018-11/2022 Member of the examining committee (half-time, final) of PhD candidates at the Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences at the University of Uppsala [Department]
11/2018 *Top reviewer for The Lancet journal in 2018 (7 manuscripts) [PUBLONS/TheLancet]
02/2018 – 11/2022 Reviewer (statistics) for The Lancet journals [PUBLONS]
01/2018 – 11/2022 European Expert on authorisation of medicinal products for human or veterinary use in the regulatory network of the European Medicines Agency [EMA]
11/2015 PSI (Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry) University Prize for master thesis in the MSc Medical Statistics course at the University of Leicester, UK
04/2007 – 06/2010 Post-doctoral stipends and travel grants funded by various third-party organizations (total 54,313 Euro)
03/2007 Poster prize at the “16. Rehabilitationswissenschaftliches Kolloquium”, Berlin, Germany
10/1996 – 03/2001 Full stipend according to the “Bavarian law on scholarships for particularly gifted pupils and students” (“Bayerisches Begabtenförderungsgesetz, BayBFG”) (4.5 years)

Additional Qualifications and Skills

Languages
German First language (CEFR: Level C2)
English Excellent (CEFR: Level C1)
Swedish Advanced (CEFR: Level B2)
French, Spanish, Chinese Basic (CEFR: Level A2)

IT
Operating Systems Linux, Mac OS X, MS Windows (all very good)
Office Applications MS Office (very good), LibreOffice (good), LaTeX (very good)
Web Design R/Shiny, XHTML, CSS, PHP, various editors (advanced)
Statistics R, SAS, SPSS (all very good), Stata (basic)
Bayesian Statistics Stan, WinBUGS/OpenBUGS, JAGS (advanced)
Programming Bash, Perl, SQL (all good), Python, Java, C/C++, Lisp (all basic)
Programming Tools GNU Emacs (very good), vi (basic)
DevOps tools Git, Travis-CI, R/testthat (all advanced)
Grid Computing SLURM, TORQUE, SGE, LoadLeveler (all very good)
Cloud Computing Amazon Web Services (eg EC2, S3, Glacier, …), Google Cloud Platform (all good)

Private
Social Commitment Greenpeace, Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union Germany (NABU), Plastic Pollution Coalition
Hobbies Web publishing, weight training, Chinese language and culture
Travelling Europe (UK, Sweden & others), USA, Australia, West Africa (Mali)