Welcome, Alessandro!

Hi everyone,

It’s Alessandro writing – I joined Red Door Analytics as a full-time Senior Biostatistician on the 1^st of November, and I am taking this opportunity to introduce myself.

Originally from Italy, where I studied for my undergraduate and master’s degree (in statistics and biostatistics, respectively), I joined Karolinska Institutet as a research assistant and statistician after graduating with my master’s. Then, I moved to the UK to study for a PhD degree in biostatistics at the University of Leicester with Michael as my main supervisor. I managed to graduate in January 2020, just before the pandemic hit! After defending my PhD thesis, I relocated back to Stockholm to join the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Karolinska Institutet as a post-doctoral researcher in biostatistics. I spent the last 3+ years there before joining Red Door.

My research background and experience focus on statistical methodology. Specifically, simple and complex survival analysis, longitudinal and multilevel models, natural history modelling in breast cancer, statistical simulation and microsimulation. I also collaborated on a variety of applied clinical research projects: from kidney disease epidemiology and pharmaco-epidemiology to critical care medicine and multimorbidity research. 

I am also a passionate R user and developer, having developed (and currently maintaining) the {rsimsum}, {KMunicate}, and {comorbidity} packages. These packages are available from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN), and are – as of writing – approaching 100,000 downloads according to RStudio’s (Posit‘s?) CRAN Mirror logs data. I also regularly contribute patches and new features to other packages, more info on that on my GitHub profile. Furthermore, I care deeply about building more efficient, more reproducible data analysis pipelines to superpower medical research. To that end, I have recently joined the American Statistical Association Biopharmaceutical Section Software Engineering Working Group (ASA BIOP SWE WG) with support from Red Door Analytics.

Why did I join the company after an entire (admittedly, short) career in academia? Well, there are multiple reasons, of course. I sometimes like to think of this as my own three P’s: Product, Pace, and People.

First and foremost, Red Door Analytics focuses on some of the things I enjoy doing most. Statistical support and consulting to solve challenging real-world problems; developing statistical software tools to streamline data analysis and bring modern methods to practice; training in biostatistics to improve statistical literacy beyond the standard methodology. I am glad I can join a company that seriously values that, and put to good use my experience and expertise.

Second, I am excited to join and develop in a fast-growing consultancy company. Academia can, sometimes, be slow, and I am looking forward to the change of pace.

Finally, a company can only be as good as its people. If you have ever met (or worked with) anybody on the team, you will know how outstanding everybody is to work with and learn from. I look forward to my time at Red Door Analytics and cannot wait to get started!

Wrapping up, here are three (non work-related) fun facts about me: I am allergic to coins, my guilty pleasure is listening to Taylor Swift from time to time, and I enjoy watching people playing Pokémon games competitively. One of these is not true: can you tell which one?