This summer, the QUOD team was pleased to welcome Sam Richards as our new NHSBT/QUOD Statistician. Continuing our tradition of introducing new team members, we invited Sam to share a bit about himself so we could get to know him better.
What were you doing most recently before joining QUOD?
I have been working in the NHSBT Statistics Team for just over 2 years; the main areas I am involved with are kidney transplantation and organ donation.
What interested you about working with QUOD?
As a statistician working in NHSBT, I am always motivated by opportunities to collect, analyse, and interpret data that make a real impact. I am also very passionate about organ donation and transplantation. Since QUOD facilitates research in this area to improve understanding and optimise transplant outcomes, I think it is a great opportunity to apply my statistical knowledge to support QUOD in providing high-quality data for world-class research.
What does your role involve?
My main duty is to provide research scientists the clinical data with the variables appropriate to their research questions (such as donor, retrieval, and recipient follow-up data) to accompany samples from QUOD. I do this by extracting the requested data from the NHSBT database.
Lightning round time:
If you were stuck on an island what three things would you bring?
- A water purification device
- A Swiss army knife
- My copy of ‘How to Stay Alive’ by Bare Grylls
Where’s your favourite place?
Cinque Terre – great for walking, cliff jumping and Italian food!
Finally, what kinds of enquiries should people bring to you, and how best can they reach you?
Please feel free to get in touch with any queries regarding the data provided via my email: sam.richards@nhsbt.nhs.uk. If I do not have the answer, I will make sure to refer your query to one of the team members from QUOD or even NHSBT!