Nigel Smeeton

I started my career as Statistical Assistant at Leeds University in the Department of Statistics, supporting the research activities of the Professor of Statistics, teaching statistics to undergraduate and postgraduate students, and running the statistical advisory service as a resource for academic staffs at Leeds.

In 1983, I joined the General Practice Research Unit at the Institute of Psychiatry, London. My research included the modelling of episodes of mental illness, the classification of mental illness, and the investigation of the repetition of attempted suicide. Moving to the United Medical and Dental Schools (now incorporated into King's College London) in 1990 enabled me to develop my teaching and tutoring skills. I established and organised the undergraduate (BDS) course in dental statistics and wrote the text Dental Statistics Made Easy. I also organised the undergraduate (MBBS) course in medical statistics, and contributed to postgraduate courses in general practice and public health.

My research included: capture-recapture methods in the estimation of population size; multinomial logistic regression in modelling asthma symptoms; proportional hazards regression applied to survival following a stroke; kappa statistics in assessing observer agreement. I have an ongoing interest in the influence of ethnicity in medical/ social research and was principal investigator for a comparative study of stroke in Barbados and South London.

In 2011, I took early retirement from full time employment at King's College. An honorary lecturership in the Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering has enabled me to retain research links with staff at the PET Imaging Centre and produce the second edition of Dental Statistics Made Easy.

I joined CRIPACC as Social Statistician in 2013. I am currently involved with the WHO Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children project and in the development of the epilepsy risk awareness checklist (ERAC). I also act as a source for general statistical advice.

• Adolescence
• Epilepsy risk assessment
• Influence of ethnicity on health behaviour and outcomes
• The modelling of observer agreement
• The distribution of multiple runs

• Dental statistics
• Medical statistics
• Postgraduate teaching (statistics) for health service staff