Stephen Burgess

Professor Stephen Burgess

(he/him/his)
Principal investigator

MRC Biostatistics Unit

About Professor Stephen Burgess

I am a Group Leader at the MRC Biostatistics Unit. 

I completed a BA and MMath (Part III) in Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. I then studied for a PhD in the MRC Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge, from 2008-2011 working on methods for Mendelian randomization analysis under the supervision of Simon Thompson. I joined the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care of the University of Cambridge in 2011. In 2013, I was awarded a Wellcome Trust entry-level fellowship (Sir Henry Wellcome Post-doctoral Fellowship) to continue theoretical and applied work in the field of Mendelian randomization. In 2017, I moved to the MRC Biostatistics Unit on a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society intermediate fellowship (Sir Henry Dale Fellowship) to establish a research group in the MRC Biostatistics Unit, where I am now a Group Leader. In 2023, I was given a Career Development Award by the Wellcome Trust to continue work in this area. I now lead a small team of researchers split between the MRC Biostatistics Unit and the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit. 

I am always open to requests for collaboration, either on theoretical or applied Mendelian randomization projects.

Research Interests

My main area of research is causal inference and specifically methods for Mendelian randomization: the use of genetic variants to understand whether putative risk factors are causally related to specific disease outcomes (target validation). 

Mendelian Randomization book

The book “Mendelian Randomization: Methods for Using Genetic Variants in Causal Estimation”, by Stephen Burgess and Simon G Thompson was published by Chapman and Hall in 2015. A second edition of the book is due to be published in mid-2021. More details are available at the book website: www.mendelianrandomization.com. 

A short course which roughly follows the content of the book is run twice a year, once in the spring and again the late autumn.

Publications

Showing 1 to 10 of 640 publications

Journal-article

Randomized, controlled, and real.

Authors: A Al-Kassab-Córdova, S Burgess, N Bashir

Published:

Journal: J Clin Epidemiol

DOI: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2026.112414