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Melania Pintilie - Statistician
Motto:Probability is a divine subject, whereas
statistics is human.
Stephen Senn. Dicing with death.
In 1989 I completed a M. Sc. degree in the Department of
Statistics of the University of Toronto and in 1992 I started
working in the biostatistics group at OCI/PMH. Since then, I
have been involved in the analysis of clinical and observational
studies in cancer research. I find applying statistics to
medical and biological analysis both fascinating and intriguing,
because the real data are ever so slightly different than the
theory assumes them to be.
I have been the statistician for the hypoxia program since
its inception in 1994, helping the researchers to design
experiments, analyse and interpret the data. Currently, the
program contains five separate and interconnected projects. The
statistical challenges and rewards come from understanding the
biological issues and being able to make the connection between
biology and statistics.
One of the recent developments in this program is an ongoing
analysis of the many microenvironment factors that are not
stable, immovable or permanent features of a tumour. Their
heterogeneity is at least threefold: space, time and
methodology. The structure of a tumour may not be uniform, the
marker may change over time and the methodology of measuring it
may not be well established. The markers need to be measured as
precisely as possible to increase the chance of finding the true
associations with the outcome.
From the statistical point of view one has to find an optimum
way to obtain a good estimate of the marker. The restrictions
are: the number of individual tissues, the amount of tissue and
the time spend quantifying the marker are limited. And yet, the
estimate has to be precise enough to be able to show an
association with the outcome when such an association exists.
The outcome needs to be clearly defined and competing risks need
to be correctly identified and analysed.
Interests:
Measuring and accounting for the heterogeneity of a marker.
Competing risks
Publications:
Publications
since 2002 (PDF format)
Competing risks: A practical perspective. Wiley.
The following portions of the book are available as PDF files:
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