About the MRC Biostatistics Unit

Who we are

Founded in 1913, we are internationally renowned for the strength of our research, and successful strategy of maintaining a unique balance between statistical innovation, dissemination and impact We are particularly recognised for our expertise in applying Bayesian inference to biomedical and public health issues.

We have approximately 60 research staff and 35 PhD students all working on different areas of cutting-edge biostatistics, including modelling of infectious diseases such as HIV and Flu, designing innovative clinical trials, improving prognosis of illnesses such as Arthritis and Cardiovascular Disease, analysing diseases traits, and creating new statistical models.

Research portfolio

Our current research portfolio is organised into five themes that span the scientific research spectrum from basic science to population health and respond to current scientific needs in biomedicine. Each theme is anchored in important scientific questions arising from our key stakeholders, questions which both motivate methodological developments and ensure their impact.

We work with leading trial centres and epidemiology groups, and public health bodies such as the UK Health Security Agency. We also have developing links with major programmes in stratified medicine and in big data analytics such as Health Data Research UK and the Alan Turing Institute.

Read more about our research themes

History of the BSU

Origins

The origins of the Unit are closely tied to those of the MRC. The National Insurance Act 1911 made provision for medical research, and a Medical Research Committee was appointed in 1913 to administer the resulting fund; this body was incorporated as the Medical Research Council by Royal Charter in 1920. The Committee’s first scheme of research, drawn up in 1913, expressly provided for a statistical department as one of the four means by which research was to be promoted.

In 1914, the Committee appointed John Brownlee (1868–1927), a Scottish physician and epidemiologist, as the first director of its Statistical Department. Brownlee was known for his work on the mathematical epidemiology of measles and on the cohort analysis of tuberculosis mortality, and he led the department until his death in 1927.

The Greenwood era and the London School of Hygiene

The dominant figure in British medical statistics in this period was Major Greenwood (1880–1949), who chaired the MRC’s Statistical Committee from 1921 and became the Council’s principal statistical adviser. In 1927 he was appointed to the chair of epidemiology and vital statistics at the newly founded London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM); following Brownlee’s death, the MRC’s statistical staff were brought together as a unit based at the School, and for the next three decades the MRC unit and the LSHTM department were closely intertwined.

The Statistical Research Unit

When Greenwood retired in 1945, Austin Bradford Hill (1897–1991) succeeded him as honorary director; the body was renamed the MRC Statistical Research Unit in 1948. Bradford Hill is renowned for the case–control and cohort studies on smoking and lung cancer that he conducted with Richard Doll, and for his textbook Principles of Medical Statistics. On Bradford Hill’s retirement in 1961, Doll (1912–2005) took over the Unit and subsequently moved it from the LSHTM to the University College Hospital Medical School.

Move to Cambridge

Doll was succeeded by Ian Sutherland, who oversaw the Unit’s relocation to Cambridge in 1980 and its renaming from “Statistical Research” to “Biostatistics”.

The Cambridge era

Nicholas Day became director in 1986, developing the Unit’s programme in cancer epidemiology and biostatistics; he served as full director until 1989 and continued as honorary director until 1999. Simon Thompson was director from 2000 to 2011, with Vern Farewell acting as director during 2011. He was followed by Sylvia Richardson (2012–2021), under whose leadership the Unit played a prominent part in the UK’s statistical response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022 John Whittaker became the Unit’s director.