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Christina Pagel

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Christina Pagel
Pagel in 2016
Born
London, England
CitizenshipUnited Kingdom, Germany
EducationSt Paul's Girls' School
Alma materThe Queen's College, Oxford
King's College London
Birkbeck College, University of London
Imperial College London
OccupationProfessor of operational research
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity College London
ThesisAnalysis of turbulent intermittency in the heliospheric magnetic field using Ulysses data (2002)

Christina Pagel (/ˈpɑːɡəl/ PAH-gəl) is a German-British mathematician and professor of operational research at University College London (UCL) within UCL's Clinical Operational Research Unit (CORU),[1] which applies operational research, data analysis and mathematical modelling to topics in healthcare. She was Director of UCL CORU from 2017 to 2022[2] and is currently Vice President of the UK Operational Research Society.[3] She also co-leads, alongside Rebecca Shipley, UCL's CHIMERA research hub which analyses data from critically ill hospital patients.[4]

Early life and education

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Pagel graduated with a BA in mathematics from The Queen's College, Oxford in 1996. She also holds an MSc in Mathematical Physics from King's College London, and MAs in Classical Civilisation, Medieval History and an MSc in Applied Statistics with Medical Applications from Birkbeck College, University of London. In 2002 Pagel was awarded a PhD in Space Physics on Turbulence in the interplanetary magnetic field from Imperial College London.[5]

Research

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Pagel's early career was spent in Boston, Massachusetts, studying the scattering of electrons in interplanetary space using data from the ACE spacecraft at Boston University with Professor Nancy Crooker.[6] In 2005 she left physics, returning to London to take up a position with the UCL Clinical Operational Research Unit applying mathematics to problems in health care.

In 2016, Pagel was awarded a Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy and Practice by the Commonwealth Fund,[7] through which Pagel spent 2016–2017 in the USA researching (a) the priorities of Republican and Democrat politicians for the goals of national health policy working with the Milbank Memorial Fund and (b) how clinical decision support systems can be better implemented within intensive care settings.[8] During that year, she also completed a fellowship at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.[9][10]

Pagel was appointed as director of UCL's Clinical Operational Research Unit (CORU) in 2017.[1] Her research uses approaches from mathematical modelling, operational research and data sciences to help people within the health service make better decisions.[5] She focuses on mortality and morbidity outcomes following cardiac surgery in children and adults in the UK, leading and contributing to several large national projects;[11][12][13][14] understanding the course of a child's stay in paediatric intensive care;[15] mathematical methods to support service delivery within hospitals.[16]

In her role since 2020 at UCL's CHIMERA centre (Collaborative Healthcare Innovation through Mathematics, EngineeRing and AI), Pagel co-leads a multidisciplinary team which analyses anonymised data from intensive care patients at University College Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital. Using tools including machine learning, the centre aims to improve understanding of the physiology of patients during illness and recovery, in order to improve their care.[17]

Pagel was instrumental in developing a statistical model to take into account the complexity of individual children with congenital heart disease, when considering a hospital's survival rate. This led to the Partial Risk Adjustment in Surgery (PRAiS) model, which has been used by the National Congenital Heart Disease Audit since 2013 to publish hospital survival rates,[18] and the associated software, developed by Pagel, has been purchased by all UK hospitals performing children's heart surgery.[19] She then led a multidisciplinary project[13] working with the Children's Heart Federation, Sense about Science and Sir David Spiegelhalter to build a website on survival after children's heart surgery, launched in 2016.[20][21][22][23]

Outreach and public engagement

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Pagel is active in school and university outreach, encouraging participation in mathematics and science subjects.[24][25][26][27]

Her work in developing the children's heart surgery website formed the basis of a national guide for researchers on how to involve the public[28] and was separately featured in a Health Foundation guide on engagement.[29]

She also contributed to the Sense about Science guide "Making Sense of Statistics".[30]

In 2023, she was the Mathematics Section President for the annual British Science Festival.[31]

Politics, policy and Covid-19

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Pagel uses tools from her research to design and analyse political data from public polls, particularly in the context of Brexit[32][33][34][35] and health policy,[36][37] and she is known as a regular podcast contributor on both themes.[38][39][40]

In May 2020, Pagel joined the Independent SAGE committee, whose aim is to offer independent advice to the UK Government during the COVID-19 pandemic.[41][42][43] As part of her work for Independent SAGE, she is regularly quoted in several newspapers,[43][44][45][46] writes for national newspapers[47][48][49] and appeared on national and international broadcast media (e.g. ITV News,[50] Sky News,[51] Channel 4 News,[52][53] and BBC Newsnight,[54][55] India NDTV[56]) and various podcasts[57][58] discussing the UK's response to the pandemic.

Awards and recognition

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In 2019, Pagel was awarded the Lyn Thomas Impact Medal from the Operational Research Society, along with her colleagues Sonya Crowe and Martin Utley. The award was made for their work related to congenital heart disease and recognised the "significant impact on the lives of children with congenital heart disease, as well on their families and the growing population of adults with the condition".[59]

In September 2021, Pagel was one of two recipients (alongside Devi Sridhar) of a special recognition award from The BMJ, and in October 2021 she won a HealthWatch UK award, both for her work in public engagement in science during the COVID-19 pandemic.[60][61][62] She was a Turing Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute by special appointment from 2021 to 2022.[63] In November 2021, she was awarded the "Companion of OR" prize by the UK Operational Research Society.[64]

She was appointed as Vice President of the UK Operational Research Society for a three-year period from January 2022 to December 2024 and delivered the prestigious annual Blackett Lecture in December 2022.[65][3]

In 2023 she was named as the Mathematics Section President for the annual British Science Festival. Presidents are considered leaders in their fields.[31]

She was a Royal Statistical Society 2023 "Statistical Excellence in Journalism Award" winner, in the category "Best statistical commentary by a non-journalist" for her article  "Physics: Do girls avoid it because it’s too hard?" – BBC Science Focus, 9 May 2022.[66]

Pagel was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health (FPH) in 2024, the highest category of FPH membership.[67]

References

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  1. ^ a b "The Team". Clinical Operational Research Unit. 18 December 2018. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  2. ^ Christina Pagel [@chrischirp] (30 June 2022). "Personal news: after 5 yrs, today's my last day as Director of @UCL_CORU" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  3. ^ a b "Board Members". The OR Society. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  4. ^ "Our team". CHIMERA. 17 July 2020. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  5. ^ a b "Iris View Profile". UCL. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
  6. ^ Pagel, C.; Crooker, N. U.; Larson, D. E.; Kahler, S. W.; Owens, M. J. (2005). "Understanding electron heat flux signatures in the solar wind" (PDF). Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics. 110 (A1). Bibcode:2005JGRA..110.1103P. doi:10.1029/2004JA010767. ISSN 2156-2202.
  7. ^ UCL (1 February 2016). "Christina Pagel wins prestigious Harkness Fellowship". UCL Mathematical & Physical Sciences. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  8. ^ "Christina Pagel | Commonwealth Fund". www.commonwealthfund.org. Retrieved 6 October 2019.
  9. ^ "Fellowship Alumni". ihi.org. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
  10. ^ Pagel, Christina; Ramnarayan, Padmanabhan; Ray, Samiran; Peters, Mark J. (1 February 2018). "Development and implementation of a real time statistical control method to identify the start and end of the winter surge in demand for paediatric intensive care". European Journal of Operational Research. 264 (3): 847–858. doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2016.08.023. ISSN 0377-2217.
  11. ^ "LAUNCHES QI: Linking AUdit and National datasets in Congenital HEart Services for Quality Improvement". The Health Foundation. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  12. ^ "NIHR Funding and Awards: CHAMPION". fundingawards.nihr.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 16 October 2019. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  13. ^ a b "NIHR Funding and Awards: PRAiS 2". fundingawards.nihr.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 16 October 2019. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  14. ^ "NIHR Funding and Awards: Morbidity after heart surgery". fundingawards.nihr.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 16 October 2019. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  15. ^ "NIHR Funding and Awards: DEPICT". fundingawards.nihr.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 16 October 2019. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  16. ^ Pagel, Christina; Banks, Victoria; Pope, Catherine; Whitmore, Pauline; Brown, Katherine; Goldman, Allan; Utley, Martin (December 2017). "Development, implementation and evaluation of a tool for forecasting short term demand for beds in an intensive care unit" (PDF). Operations Research for Health Care. 15: 19–31. doi:10.1016/j.orhc.2017.08.003.
  17. ^ "CHIMERA". University College London. 22 July 2020. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  18. ^ "National Congenital Heart Disease Audit 2013 – 2016". HQIP. 8 March 2018. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  19. ^ "XIP: PRAiS v3". XIP, online licensing portal. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  20. ^ Pagel, Christina; Spiegelhalter, David (21 June 2016). "Making NHS data public is not the same as making it accessible – we can and should do better". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  21. ^ "New online tool makes heart surgery data more accessible | StatsLife". www.statslife.org.uk. Archived from the original on 5 October 2019. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  22. ^ "Doctor's Diary: There's another side to the closure of children's heart surgery wards". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  23. ^ The Lancet (June 2016). "Communicating risk about children's heart surgery well". The Lancet. 387 (10038): 2576. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(16)30888-1. ISSN 0140-6736. PMID 27353805.
  24. ^ "IMA Early Career Mathematicians' Autumn Conference 2018". IMA. 18 September 2018. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
  25. ^ "Mathematical Sciences Seminar – Birkbeck, University of London". bbk.ac.uk. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
  26. ^ "We're Stuck! | China Plate Theatre". www.chinaplatetheatre.com. Archived from the original on 9 October 2019. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
  27. ^ "I'm a Scientist, Get me out of here! 2013 participants". 9 October 2019. Archived from the original on 5 August 2013.
  28. ^ "Public engagement: a practical guide – Sense about Science". senseaboutscience.org. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
  29. ^ "Section 3: Extending influence and widening impact". The Health Foundation. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
  30. ^ "Making Sense of Statistics – Sense about Science". senseaboutscience.org. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
  31. ^ a b "17 of the UK's best scientific minds announced as Scientific Section Presidents". British Science Association. 11 May 2023. Retrieved 1 June 2023.
  32. ^ "Polling 'People vs Parliament': What a new survey says about our constitutional mess". politics.co.uk. 9 September 2019. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  33. ^ "With No-Deal Now Leavers' Preferred Brexit Outcome, Ruling It Out Could Create Problems for the Tories". HuffPost. 8 April 2019. Retrieved 6 October 2019.
  34. ^ Wright, Oliver (27 April 2019). "It's not only MPs split on best Brexit". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 6 October 2019.
  35. ^ Pagel, Christina. "Why an election is the best bet to stop Brexit". The New European. Archived from the original on 1 November 2019. Retrieved 1 November 2019.
  36. ^ "Christina Pagel: Doctors and nurses can have an influence on Brexit to help protect the NHS". The BMJ. 14 November 2018. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  37. ^ Jones, David K.; Pagel, Christina; Koller, Christopher F. (5 December 2018). "The Future of Health Care Reform – A View from the States on Where We Go from Here". New England Journal of Medicine. 379 (23): 2189–2191. doi:10.1056/NEJMp1809153. PMID 30575461. S2CID 58630252.
  38. ^ "Sovereignty Matters and Matters of Sovereignty". Audioboom. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  39. ^ "Voices from Grand Challenges – Brexit Survey with Prof Christina Pagel and Christabel Cooper". Retrieved 6 October 2019.
  40. ^ "WIHI: How to Beat the Boring Aspects of QI". ihi.org. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
  41. ^ Davis, Nicola (4 May 2020). "Rival Sage group says Covid-19 policy must be clarified". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  42. ^ Mahase, Elisabeth (5 May 2020). "Covid-19: UK advisory panel members are revealed after experts set up new group". BMJ. 369: m1831. doi:10.1136/bmj.m1831. ISSN 1756-1833. PMID 32371467.
  43. ^ a b Sample, Ian (22 May 2020). "Scientists warn 1 June is too early for schools to reopen in England". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  44. ^ "UK on course for 30,000 more coronavirus deaths unless Johnson changes approach, experts warn". The Independent. 26 June 2020. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  45. ^ Devlin, Hannah; Siddique, Haroon (26 June 2020). "Improve test and trace before schools reopen, Sage report says". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  46. ^ Holder, Josh; Santora, Marc (15 January 2021). "Hospitals in England Struggle in the Grip of the Virus". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
  47. ^ "England needs to ditch its 'vaccine just' strategy for 'vaccine plus' instead | Christina Pagel and Martin McKee". The Guardian. 7 October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
  48. ^ Pagel, Professor Christina (1 August 2021). "Fewer people are dying but we still need to worry about long Covid". Metro. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
  49. ^ "Common myths about Covid – debunked". The Guardian. 13 August 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
  50. ^ @chrischirp (23 June 2020). "ITV London News" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  51. ^ @chrischirp (10 June 2020). "Was very briefly on Sky News tonight..." (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  52. ^ "Tory MP says PM needs to 'rethink' Covid restrictions and 'get Britain working again'". Channel 4 News. 27 November 2020. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
  53. ^ "'If you alienate public, you blame them, you point fingers at them, things fall apart' – behavioural scientist Prof Steve Reicher". Channel 4 News. 19 October 2020. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
  54. ^ @BBCNewsnight (23 June 2020). ""I think we are moving too fast. One thing we know we need is a test, trace and isolate system. Every country that is opening up successfully has one in place." says Christina Pagel, UCL Clinical Research Director" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  55. ^ @BBCNewsnight (26 October 2020). ""Covid is moving faster than political decision making."" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  56. ^ UK Reopens Amid New Variant Surge | Left, Right & Centre, retrieved 28 June 2021
  57. ^ @bunker_pod (10 December 2020). "Ian Dunt talks to @chrischirp of @IndependentSage about the risks from the Christmas Window, and how to stay [free] from COVID over the festive period" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  58. ^ "More or Less – Spreadsheet snafu, 'Long Covid' quantified, and the birth of probability". BBC Sounds. 7 October 2020. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
  59. ^ "Lyn Thomas Medal Winners – The OR Society". theorsociety.com. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  60. ^ Jones, Helen (30 September 2021). "The BMJ Awards 2021: Special recognition award for science communication". BMJ. 374: n2326. doi:10.1136/bmj.n2326. ISSN 1756-1833. PMID 34593375. S2CID 238219978.
  61. ^ "Winners 2021". The BMJ Awards. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
  62. ^ "Award - HealthWatch-UK". www.healthwatch-uk.org. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
  63. ^ UCL (28 October 2020). "Turing people at UCL". UCL and The Turing. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
  64. ^ "Companion of OR - The OR Society". www.theorsociety.com. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  65. ^ "Blackett Lecture - The OR Society". www.theorsociety.com. Retrieved 16 December 2022.
  66. ^ "Statistical Excellence in Journalism Awards: 2023 winners". RSS. Retrieved 7 July 2023.
  67. ^ Limited (http://www.arkom.co.uk), Arkom. "FPH welcomes ten new Honorary Fellows". Faculty of Public Health. Retrieved 1 July 2024.
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