Biography and research overview
Dr Nuria Porta is a Lead Statistician at the Cancer Research UK-funded Clinical Trials and Statistics Unit at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR-CTSU), London, United Kingdom. With more than 10 years’ experience in the design, methodology and analysis of clinical trials, and a strong methodology background in survival analysis methods, she currently oversees the methodological aspects from design to analysis in a number of trials predominantly in urological cancers, with particular focus in bladder and metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).
Her current research interests are prospective evaluation of imaging interventions, and qualification of novel imaging endpoints and biomarkers of response into clinical practice. She leads the methodological development of an emerging portfolio of imaging trials within ICR-CTSU. She is also interested in maximising the use of data collected within a clinical trial, in particular to better describe the prognosis of a patient over time using dynamic prediction models.
She graduated in Mathematics (2002) and in Statistics (2004) from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, while also acquiring practical experience on clinical studies and biostatistics working in a clinical contract organisation. She chose to pursue a scientific career and obtained her PhD in Statistics (2010) at the UPC on the topic of “Interval censored semi-competing risks data: a novel approach for modelling bladder cancer”, motivated by The Spanish Bladder Cancer Study (EPICURO), one of the largest bladder cancer studies worldwide.
She then contributed to the set-up of the Clinical Trials Unit (UCICEC-CAIBER) at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) in Barcelona, while also holding a part-time associate lecturer position at the UPC Statistics and Operations Research Department. After a secondment as a National Expert at the European Medicines Agency (2013), providing statistical and methodological expertise to regulatory science projects, she joined the ICR in 2014.
She is a member of the Advanced Disease Subgroup of the UK National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI)’s Prostate Group, and sits on independent data monitoring committees of several UK trials. She is a member of the International Society of Clinical Biostatistics and of the International Biometric Society (IBS), and sits on the Representative Council of the IBS representing the Spanish Region, and also in the IBS Finance and Budget Committee.