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David Gillespie

BSc, PhD


Senior Research Fellow in Medical Statistics

I am a Senior Research Fellow in Medical Statistics and am on a secondment from the Centre for Trials Research at Cardiff University for one-day a week.

My background is in Medical Statistics, and I have been working on the design, conduct, analysis, and reporting of randomised trials and other well designed studies since 2007. I completed my PhD at the end of 2016, with my thesis titled “Medication Adherence in Clinical Research and Associated Methodological Challenges”.

My research interests focus on prudent medication use in the field of infectious diseases, and my work can be broadly split into two key areas:

  • Medication adherence – specifically, ways in which adherence to medication is conceptualised, measured, and modelled
  • The development and evaluation of antimicrobial stewardship interventions

I currently hold a five-year post-doctoral research fellowship from Health and Care Research Wales where I am investigating the use of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) in individuals at-risk of HIV-acquisition living in Wales (https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/centre-for-trials-research/research/studies-and-trials/view/do-prep).

In addition, my main areas of methodological interest include:

  • Trials and general research methodology (improving the ways in which we do randomised trials and other well designed studies)
  • Causal modelling (modelling approaches that aim to answer causal questions, rather than purely associational)
  • Missing data (prevention of, and fitting models when there are missing data).