David Spiegelhalter - Career

Career

Spiegelhalter was research assistant in Brunel University in 1976 and then visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, 1977–8. After his PhD, he was a research assistant for the Royal College of Physicians; he was based at the University of Nottingham, where his PhD supervisor, Adrian Smith, had been appointed a professor.

From 1981 he was at the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit at Cambridge. He has been an honorary lecturer at the University of Hong Kong since 1991. He has also been a consultant for GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and the World Anti-Doping Agency. He played a leading role in the public inquiries into children's heart surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary and the murders by Harold Shipman. Between 2007 and 2012 he divided his work between the Statistical Laboratory (three fifths) and the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit (two fifths). He left the MRC in March 2012 and now works full time at the Statistical Laboratory.

His main interests outside work are his stained glass work, samba drumming and treks in various parts of the world. In December 2011 he appeared as a contestant on the BBC game show Winter Wipeout and came 7th overall.

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