Professor Natalie Rowland (née Ives) BSc (Hons), MSc

• MSc in Statistics, University of Sheffield, 1997
• BSc (Hons) in Mathematics (1st), University of Leicester, 1995

Natalie graduated from the University of Leicester in 1995 with a first class BSc (Hons) degree in Mathematics. After a gap year, she then went on to study for an MSc in Statistics at the University of Sheffield.

After finishing her Masters, Natalie started work as a Statistician within a HIV epidemiology research unit, first at Imperial College School of Medicine, London and then at King's College School of Medicine, London. In 2001, she joined the Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit (BCTU) at the University of Birmingham as a Medical Statistician.

Since arriving in Birmingham, she has progressed to Senior Statistician (since 2004) and was the Statistics Team Leader from March 2007 to September 2021 responsible for the management and oversight of the growing statistics team within BCTU.  Since September 2021, she has been the BCTU Director of Statistics and Research Strategy.  She was conferred the academic title of Professor of Clinical Trials and Statistics in August 2024.

Natalie’s primary interest is in the methodological design, conduct, analysis and delivery of clinical trials to improve evidence and change clinical practice to deliver better outcomes for patients.  She is the lead methodologist and senior statistician on a substantial and diverse portfolio of high quality clinical trials in a wide range of disease areas, including Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Coloproctology, Neuroscience and Parkinson’s disease, Renal Disease, Diabetes, Critical Care and Trauma.  The trials assess medical, surgical and complex interventions in both the Primary and Secondary care settings in both adults and children.

Natalie has built a substantial portfolio of externally funded clinical trial research (>£32 million), where she led on the methodological development of the research question, and has published over 100 peer-reviewed research publications, the majority in world-leading, high-impact general medical journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the Lancet, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and the British Medical Journal (BMJ). 

Natalie has an interest in training and development, and in particular the training of clinical investigators of the future in the design, management and analysis of clinical trials.  She has developed a clinical trials “clerkship” for clinical investigators that combines a programme of training with hands-on experience, mentorship and access to experts working in clinical trials.  This Clinical Trials Unit based training provides fellows with a unique opportunity to learn about clinical trials through hands on experience in a highly active research environment.

• Sackett DL. Clinician-trialist rounds: 20. Shouldn't 'trialists-in-training' rotate through RCT-clerkships? Clin Trials. 2013 Dec 9. PMID:24323133

Teaching Programmes

• Masters in Public Health (Clinical Trials module)
• Masters in Clinical Trials (Rationale for Clinical Trials, Key Concepts and Features; Analyses of Clinical Trials, Interpretation and Communication of Trial Findings;  and Design and Delivery of Further Clinical Trials modules)
• Masters in Clinical Oncology
• BCTU’s CPD approved "Introduction to Randomised Controlled Trials in Healthcare" course

Natalie is interested in supervising doctoral researchers in the following general research areas:

• Randomised controlled trials including pilot and feasibility trials
• Clinical trial methodology
• Methods to improve the design and efficiency of clinical trials

Natalie is interested in the methodological design, conduct, analysis and delivery of large scale late phase randomised controlled clinical trials.  She is the Lead Methodologist and Senior Statistician on a substantial and diverse portfolio of high quality clinical trials in the areas of Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Coloproctology, Neuroscience and Parkinson’s disease, Renal Disease, Diabetes, Critical Care and Trauma assessing medical, surgical and complex interventions in both the Primary and Secondary care settings in both adults and children. She is a co-applicant on a number of trials and has been awarded over £32 million of research funds, mainly from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) who are the leading funder of clinical research in the UK, funded by the Department of Health.

Natalie's research has been published in various high impact scientific journals (NEJM, Lancet, BMJ).  She has over 100 peer-reviewed research publications.

• Advisor at the NIHR Research Support Service (RSS) delivered by the University of Birmingham and Partners
• Member of the NIHR Undergraduate Internship Programme Selection Committee (2024 – present)
• Member of the NIHR Incubator for Methodology (2020 - present), and lead for the Incubator Awareness Raising work stream
• Member of the UKCRC Statistics Operational Group committee (2019 - present).
• Reviewer for various scientific journals
• Statistical reviewer for the NIHR (HTA, EME, RfPB)
• Independent statistician on several Trial Steering and Data Monitoring Committees contributing to the oversight and direction of externally run clinical trials