Marta Alcalde Herraiz

I am a DPhil student in Clinical Epidemiology and Medical Statistics. My research interests lie in using real-world, routinely collected healthcare data to improve the safety and effectiveness of treatments. My work is particularly focused on medical devices, and during my DPhil I aim to evaluate and test methods for the analysis of observational data in ways that minimise bias and strengthen causal inference.

I hold a BSc in Engineering Physics from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. During my degree, I pursued internships at the Comparative Medicine Centre and Bioimage of Catalonia (CMCiB) and at the Computational Biology and Complex Systems (BIOCOM-SC) research group, which sparkled my interest on medical statistics. I later conducted my Bachelor Thesis at the Health Data Sciences (HDS) research group, at the University of Oxford, where I used Mendelian Randomisation to study the causal association between sclerostin inhibition and cardiovascular risk factors. This experience truly deepened my interest in epidemiology and public health. Following my undergraduate studies, I joined Prof. Prieto-Alhambra's research group as a Research Assistant in Health Data Sciences and Pharmacogenomics. 

Alongside my DPhil, I continue to work part-time within the HDS research group, contributing to the development of open-source analytical tools and to large-scale multinational network studies for the European Medicines Agency's DARWIN-EU initiative.