Leonhard Held

Leonhard Held is a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Zurich’s Faculty of Medicine, affiliated with the Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute (EBPI). He actively promotes open and reproducible research in health sciences, serving as Director of the UZH Center for Reproducible Science and as the university’s Open Science delegate.

His research focuses on methodological aspects of epidemiological, clinical, and pre-clinical studies, with emphasis on meta-analysis, causal inference, and Bayesian statistical frameworks. Recent work explores reproducibility metrics, data-sharing practices, and the impact of school closures on infectious disease spread.

Key trends in his publications include meta-regression for replication projects, survivor average causal effects in RCTs, and reproducibility challenges in oncology trials. He contributes to statistical software development (e.g., R package ‘polyCub’) and methodological guidelines for robust research practices.

As a leader in open science, he advocates for training researchers in data-intensive workflows and developing sustainable open research data infrastructure, as evidenced by his involvement in Swiss stakeholder engagement studies.