Sarah Darby | |
|---|---|
| Born | Sarah C. Darby |
| Education | Imperial College London (BSc) University of Birmingham (MSc) London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (PhD) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Epidemiology Statistics Cancer |
| Institutions | University of Oxford Radcliffe Infirmary St Thomas's Hospital Medical School National Radiological Protection Board Radiation Effects Research Foundation |
| Thesis | A Bayesian Approach to Parallel Line Bioassay (1977) |
| Doctoral students | Helen Weiss |
| Website | www |
Sarah C. DarbyFRS isprofessor ofmedical statistics at theUniversity of Oxford.[1] Her research has focused the beneficial effects ofsmoking cessation, the risk oflung cancer from residentialradon,[2] and treatments for earlybreast cancer.[3] She is also a principal scientist with theCancer Research UK in theClinical Trial Service Unit (CTSU) andEpidemiological Studies Unit at theNuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, at theRadcliffe Infirmary, Oxford.[4][5]
Darby studiedmathematics atImperial College London (BSc) andmathematical statistics at theUniversity of Birmingham (MSc).[6] She completed her PhD at theLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1977, where her research investigatedBayesian approaches to analysingbioassays.[7]
After her PhD, she worked atSt Thomas's Hospital Medical School, theNational Radiological Protection Board, and theRadiation Effects Research Foundation inHiroshima, before moving to the University of Oxford in 1984. Her major funder since then has beenCancer Research UK.[6]
Darby and her team have demonstrated that there is a linear relationship between the dose of radiation delivered incidentally to the heart duringbreast cancerradiotherapy and the subsequent risk ofischaemicheart disease, and that the absolute size of the radiation-related risk is bigger for women already at increased risk of heart disease.[6][8]
She and her team have also estimated the absolute size of the benefit of radiotherapy to breast cancer patients and their work is enabling comparison of the likely absolute benefit of radiotherapy with its likely absolute risk for individual patients.[6] Therefore, it is now becoming possible to assess which patients can receive standard radiotherapy, which should be considered for advanced techniques, and which should avoid radiotherapy altogether.[6][9]
Other topics that Darby has worked on include estimating the risk oflung cancer from residentialradon, the risk of invasive breast cancer after a diagnosis of ductalcarcinomain situ, and the risk of cancer aftercomputerised tomography (CT) scans in young people.[6][10]
Darby was awarded theGuy Medal in Bronze in 1988 by theRoyal Statistical Society.[11] She was elected aFellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2019.[6]
"All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available underCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." --Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies at theWayback Machine (archived 2016-11-11)
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