Jennifer Nicholas

Dr Jennifer Nicholas is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Statistics within the Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). She joined LSHTM in 2012 and was promoted to her current position in 2018 after serving as Assistant Professor (2014-2018) and Research Fellow (2012-2014).

Her educational background includes a PhD in Epidemiology from King's College London, an MPhil in Epidemiology from the University of Cambridge, and a BSc in Anthropology and Biology from Durham University. Prior to joining LSHTM, she worked as a Research Associate at King's College London and as a Public Health Intelligence Specialist in the NHS.

Dr Nicholas specializes in clinical trials and observational research in neurology, with particular expertise in adaptive trial design and methods for analysis of longitudinal data. Her research focuses on clinical trial design in dementia and multiple sclerosis, especially trials incorporating repeated measures and medical imaging outcomes. She leads significant research projects including the Octopus multi-arm multi-stage clinical trial for progressive multiple sclerosis with the MS Society and served as trial statistician for the MS-STAT2 trial evaluating simvastatin for secondary progressive MS. She maintains an ongoing collaboration with the UCL Dementia Research Centre on the Insight 46 neuroscience sub-study of the MRC National Survey of Health and Development.

Her publication record demonstrates expertise across multiple neurodegenerative conditions, with particular focus on multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, and dementia. Her recent work examines the relationship between lifestyle factors (such as shift work, physical activity, and sports participation) and brain health outcomes in aging populations, often using data from the 1946 British Birth Cohort.

Dr Nicholas serves on multiple Trial Steering Committees and Data and Safety Monitoring Committees, and was previously an Editorial Board member for Neurology (2020-2022). She has received numerous research grants supporting her work in dementia and multiple sclerosis research.

In teaching, she organizes the Linear Regression course for the MSc Medical Statistics program, serves as module organizer for Basic Statistics for Clinical Trials, and co-organizes the Short Course Essentials of Clinical Trials. She has supervised over ten MSc summer projects and provides statistical guidance to PhD students at UCL.