William Astle

Dr William Astle

(he/him/his)
Principal investigator

MRC Biostatistics Unit

About Dr William Astle

I am a Senior Lecturer in the MRC Biostatistics Unit, and a biostatistician funded by National Health Service Blood and Transplant to address problems in fields of broad relevance to the blood service. 

I am particularly interested in the development and application of statistical methods to answer questions in genetics, haematology and transfusion.

Research Interests

With Sara Trompeter (UCLH), Simon Stanworth (Oxford), Nick Gleadall, Marie Chion, Folarin Oyebolu and others (Cambridge), I am involved in the Haem-Match project which aims to improve the allocation of donated blood to patients using genetically inferred blood types. We collaborate with the Netherland’s blood service Sanquin on this work.

I have also worked in research into the genetic basis for population variation in blood cell phenotypes. I am currently pursuing investigation of platelet function phenotypes with Chris Jones (Reading), Ernest Turro (Mount Sinai, New York).

Teaching

I am responsible for coordinating the Health Data Science stream of Cambridge's MPhil in Population Health Sciences, a course offered jointly by the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, the MRC Epidemiology Unit and the MRC Biostatistics Unit. The Health Data Science stream offers courses in advanced biostatistics, Bayesian statistics, machine learning, causal inference, genetic epidemiology, geostatistics and infectious disease modelling. Applications are welcome from excellent students with a background in quantitative subjects like mathematics, engineering, physics and computer science, but also students who are specialists in the biological sciences and medicine. If you are considering applying you can visit the course website here.

Administration

I am a member of the following University committees:

University and College Union

I am a Departmental Rep. and the Membership Secretary for the Cambridge branch of UCU.

NHSBT supports six other research groups in Cambridge led by Rebecca Cardigan, Cedric Ghevaert, Emanuele di Angelantonio, Nick Matheson, Nick Gleadall and Simón Méndez-Ferrer.

Publications

Showing 1 to 10 of 60 publications

Journal-article

SMIM1 absence is associated with reduced energy expenditure and excess weight.

Authors: L Stefanucci, C Moslemi, AR Tomé, S Virtue, G Bidault, NS Gleadall, LPE Watson, JE Kwa, F Burden, S Farrow, DBDS Genetic Consortium, J Chen, MAGIC, U Võsa, K Burling, L Walker, J Ord, P Barker, J Warner, A Frary, K Renhstrom, SE Ashford, J Piper, G Biggs, WN Erber, GJ Hoffman, N Schoenmakers, C Erikstrup, K Rieneck, MH Dziegiel, H Ullum, V Azzu, M Vacca, HJ Aparicio, Q Hui, K Cho, YV Sun, PW Wilson, OA Bayraktar, A Vidal-Puig, SR Ostrowski, WJ Astle, ML Olsson, JR Storry, OB Pedersen, WH Ouwehand, K Chatterjee, D Vuckovic, M Frontini

Published:

Journal: Med

DOI: 10.1016/j.medj.2024.05.015