Methods in Evidence Synthesis seminar (MESS)

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The speakers will cover an example from the ongoing update of the “Interventions to prevent obesity in children” Cochrane reviews (ages 5-12 years and 13-18 years) and discuss a living systematic review app that Luke McGuinness and Lena set up.

Lena Schmidt

I initially did my BSc. in Germany, in applied health sciences. As student intern I did two internships with Clive Adams at the Cochrane Schizophrenia group in Nottingham, where we worked on disseminating evidence on social media, and on sharing data from Cochrane reviews. After that I did a NIHR Systematic Reviews fellowship with Julian here in Bristol. This included some research about deep learning and PICO extraction, and living reviews. Later, I started working at Sciome, a company based in the US. With Sciome I am working on software for systematic reviews that have automation features, for example to stop screening early with the help of machine-learning. More recently I started a PhD at the NIHR Innovation Observatory at Newcastle University, developing automation approaches for Horizon Scanning workflows.

Francesca Spiga
I did my BSc+MSc in Biological Sciences in Italy at the university of Cagliari graduating in 1999. I then went to Dundee in Scotland for a two-years post-doc position in Pharmacology and Neuroscience. In 2002 I came to Bristol, and here I did my PhD by publications while I worked in the Translational Health Sciences section first as SRA first and then as RF. My research focused on glucocorticoids hormones and stress using pre-clinical research models. My specific interest was on circadian and ultradian rhythms of glucocorticoid secretion, and on the adrenal steroidogenic pathway dynamics in health and disease. In 2019 I decided to change field and in 2020 I completed a MSc in Epidemiology in Bristol. I then started working with Julian as SRA in Research Synthesis. I first worked the ICEP2, a CRUK-funded programme grant, mainly on a systematic review of tools for the assessment of risk of bias in Mendelian Randomization studies, and in July 2021 I started working on the NIHR-funded project on prevention of obesity in children.