Kara-Louise Royle

Profile

I am an early-career researcher with a background in medical statistics. I have experience working in clinical and healthcare research through the design, management, and analysis of cancer clinical trials.

 My career started when I completed an NIHR Research Methods Internship at Keele University in the summer of 2014. The internship considered when a time-varying predictor should be measured in prognosis research, used two observational cohort datasets and her work led to co-authorship of a publication.

 Following an MSc in Statistics at Lancaster University, I joined the Clinical Trials Research Unit (part of the Leeds Institute of Clinical Trials Research (LICTR)) at the University of Leeds (UoL) in 2016 as a Medical Statistician. I later progressed to Senior Medical Statistician in 2019 and Principal Statistician in 2022 reflecting the development of my expertise in clinical trials research. My main research area is clinical trials, with complex adaptive designs, in patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma. More recently, I have focused on the design of biomarker guided platform trials and supporting the development of junior staff members both pastorally and professionally in a managerial and supervising statistician role.

 In 2021 I began a part-time NIHR Doctoral Research fellowship. My project considers how overall survival is analysed in cancer clinical trials, when trial participants can receive subsequent lines of anti-cancer therapy, with the aim to develop new or extend existing statistical methodology. Within my fellowship, I am conducting qualitative work to elicit stakeholder opinions. Patients and the public were included as stakeholders, therefore patient and public involvement has been essential. This links with my passion to engage with and involve patients and the general public with my research and clinical trial research as a whole. I am a regular exhibitor at the University’s public engagement festival “Be Curious” having designed “the chocolate trial” to introduce families to the fundamental parts of a clinical trial aiming to inspire the next generation into a career in research.

Responsibilities

• Public Engagement Lead for LICTR

Research interests

• The design and analysis of cancer clinical trials. My main interest is in personalised medicine through the use of biomarker guided platform trials and the impact of subsequent treatment lines. 
• Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement. In particular how to share research with school children in a digestible and interesting way.

Qualifications

• MSc Statistics (Lancaster University)
• BSc Mathematics (University of Birmingham)

Professional memberships

• UK Myeloma Research Alliance (UK-MRA) (Member)
• CRUK DCSU Patient Involvement and Diversity Community (Member)

Student education

• Lecturer on Analytic Research Module (MEDR5120M)
• In the past I have acted as an MSc dissertation supervisor on:
  • MSc Health informatics with Data Science
  • MSc Data Science and Analytics

Research groups and institutes

• Leeds Institute of Clinical Trials Research