Brian Hobbs is a PhD student in the Division of Biostatistics
and advisee
of Dr. Bradley Carlin.
His research involves adaptive Bayesian clinical trial designs which have the potential to save
time and expense as well as minimize the number of subjects exposed to an inferior
treatment by incorporating prior information using historical data from previous
investigations or from published literature to update the likelihood or as non-randomized
historical control groups. His work is featured prominently in
sections 6.2 and 6.3 of the third edition of textbook
Bayesian Methods for Data Analysis by Dr. Bradley Carlin & Dr. Thomas Louis.
His first publication
“Practical Bayesian design and analysis for drug and device clinical trials," J. Biopharmaceutical Statistics, 18, 54-80, 2008
demonstrates Bayesian analysis and sample size calculations in two applied settings where incorporation of available historical information is crucial,
one concerning an AIDS drug trial and a comparison of left ventricular assist devices (LVADs). During the summer of 2007 Brian worked for
Takeda Global Research & Development
as an intern statistician. He also worked as an intern under Dr. Daniel
Sargent in the Cancer Center
Statistics department at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN during the summer of 2006.
Brian also has three years of experience as a research assistant under Dr. Jim Neaton working with the statistical team
for large (N>6000) international, randomized, multi-center trials comparing strategies
for the management of antiretroviral therapy in HIV-infected patients (Community Programs for
Clinical Research on AIDS). (Brian's
C.V. in .pdf format)
Brian recently presented research “Power Priors for Adaptive Incorporation of Historical Information in Clinical Trials,”
at the 2009 Bayesian Biostatistics Conference, in Houston, TX with Dr. Carlin.
How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human
thought
which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the
objects of reality? Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by
taking thought, able to fathom the properties of real things.
- Albert Einstein
David Benjamin Hobbs: Oct. 11th, 1987 - Nov. 25th, 2007
