Welcome to Steve Coad's homepage!

I am a Reader in Statistics in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London. On this page, you will find information on the following:

1. Teaching for 2019-20.

2. Recent research.

3. Current preprints.

4. Publications.

5. Recent talks, both seminars and conference presentations.

6. Research projects for PhD or MPhil students.

7. Research grants for 2008-09.

8. Administrative responsibilities for 2019-20.

9. Further information.

10. Contact details.

Teaching

In 2019-20, I give two lecture courses. Brief syllabi for these are given below. I also give the course Topics in the Design of Experiments at the London Taught Course Centre.

Long division of integers: quotient and remainder. Evaluation of arithmetic expressions involving fractions. Estimation of quantities. Simplification of algebraic expressions involving exponents. Long division of polynomials: quotient and remainder. Factorisation of quadratic and cubic expressions. Simplification of rational expressions. Simplification of algebraic expressions. Algebraic substitutions. Simplification of arithmetic expressions involving square roots. Solving linear inequalities. Differentiation and integration of polynomials and simple functions involving trigonometric or exponential expressions.

The course material for Autumn Semester 2019 is available on the Essential Mathematical Skills web page.

Likelihood. Normal linear model. Method of maximum likelihood. Asymptotic properties of maximum likelihood estimators. Generalised likelihood ratio tests. Wilks' theorem. Exponential family. Generalised linear model: fitting the model. Assessing the fit of a model: deviance. Comparing models: analysis of deviance. Inspecting and checking models. Binary response data: modelling binary response probabilities; logistic regression; overdispersion. Count data: Poisson regression; log-linear models for means; models for contingency tables. Survival data: censoring; survivor and hazard functions; exponential and Weibull regression.

The course material for Autumn Semester 2019 is available on the Statistical Modelling II web page.

Research

Topics

My current research is mainly in the area of sequential analysis, with particular emphasis on medical applications. The main topics that I have recently been working on are briefly described below.

1. Inference following Sequentially Designed Experiments.

My current research in this area is concerned with the construction of corrected confidence sets for an adaptive normal nonlinear model. There are many examples of such models in chemometrics, such as the Michaelis-Menten model and the first-order growth or decay model. With these models, the design points are chosen sequentially based on the previous data, which complicates the analysis. My research is joint work with M.B. Woodroofe at the University of Michigan and builds on our earlier papers on adaptive normal linear models.

2. Sequential Procedures for Multi-Armed Clinical Trials.

When there are more than two treatments being compared in a clinical trial, the use of a sequential procedure can sometimes require substantially fewer patients than a fixed-sample design to achieve the same error probabilities. My most recent research in this area, which is joint work with A. Biswas at the Indian Statistical Institute, is concerned with the development of a general elimination rule for comparing several treatments with responses which are multivariate, continuous and dependent on prognostic factors.

3. Response-Adaptive Designs in Clinical Trials.

These designs use the accumulating data in a clinical trial to skew the allocation probabilities in favour of the treatment which is performing better thus far in the trial. The simplest such designs, from a mathematical point of view, are adaptive urn designs and my most recent research in this area, which is joint work with A. Ivanova at the University of North Carolina, addresses the problem of bias following such a design. Current work includes the use of a stopping time and the consideration of more than two treatments.

4. Testing for the Number of Components in Mixture Models.

The determination of the number of components in a finite mixture distribution is an important, but difficult, problem. A number of approaches have been proposed in the literature for tackling the case of a normal mixture, such as the use of posterior Bayes factors and bootstrapping. In joint work with M.N. Goria at the University of Trento, a detailed comparison is being carried out of these methods for the normal case and we then plan to develop analogous approaches for the determination of the number of components in a gamma mixture.

5. Inference for Secondary Parameters following Sequential Tests.

When carrying out estimation following a sequential clinical trial, methods are available for constructing corrected confidence intervals for primary parameters. However, in practice, there is often also interest in secondary parameters. In joint work with R.C. Weng at the National Chengchi University, corrected confidence intervals are being developed for secondary parameters. This work builds on existing work for primary parameters and complements recent work in the literature based on related techniques.

Research Students

Mukherjee, A. (2019): "Covariate-adjusted response-adaptive designs for clinical trials". PhD.

Liu, W. (2016): "Group-sequential response-adaptive designs for comparing several treatments". PhD.

Alam, M.I. (2015): "Optimal adaptive designs for dose finding in early phase clinical trials". PhD.

Yeung, W.Y. (2013): "Inference following biased coin designs in clinical trials". PhD.

Barbáchano, Y. (2007): "Adaptive designs for clinical trials which adjust for imbalances in prognostic factors". DPhil.

Bailey, S.M. (2007): "Sequential adaptive designs for early phase clinical trials". DPhil.

Halimeh, A.A. (2004): "Sequential procedures for comparing several normal means". MPhil.

Morgan, C.C. (2003): "Group-sequential response-adaptive designs for clinical trials". DPhil.

Current Preprints

My current preprints, together with abstracts, are listed below. Please contact me for paper copies.

"The use of group sequential tests with designs which adjust for imbalances in prognostic factors" (with Yolanda Barbáchano). Under revision for Statist. Med.

Minimisation and methods that make use of optimum design theory have been suggested to balance treatment groups across prognostic factors. Although the problem of analysing a trial when one of these methods has been used has been looked at in the fixed-sample case, it has so far not been considered in the group sequential setting. In this paper, simulation is used to explore the consequences of adapting for prognostic factors in a group sequential trial. Both Pocock's test and the O'Brien and Fleming test are considered and three methods of adjusting for covariates are studied. When the variance of the response variables is unknown, the critical values are obtained using those in the known variance case and the significance level approach. The resulting tests have approximately the required type I error probability. To maintain the desired power, sample size re-estimation is incorporated. Simulation shows that the tests satisfy the power requirement for moderate sample sizes, with those using complete randomisation being less powerful than those using the adaptive methods. The results are then illustrated using data from an actual clinical trial. Repeated confidence intervals for the mean treatment effects are also calculated.

"The power of covariate-adaptive randomisation schemes in clinical trials" (with Wai Y. Yeung). Submitted to Clin. Trials.

When one or more covariates affect patients' responses to different treatments, they can be included both in the randomisation stage and in the analysis stage. In the randomisation stage, covariate-adaptive randomisation schemes can be used. Such schemes have been studied when two treatments are under comparison. The randomisation schemes are applied to patients classified by their prognostic factors to ensure that those with the same prognostic profile are balanced between the two treatments. In the analysis stage, analysis of covariance can be used to compare the mean responses for the two treatments. In this paper, three covariate-adaptive randomisation schemes are studied when either global or marginal balance is sought. By considering a fixed-effects model for the treatment responses when there are several covariates, an analysis of covariance t test is carried out. Numerical values of the power are simulated for the three randomisation schemes for both global and marginal balance when there is an interaction between the covariates. It is shown that the covariate-adaptive adjustable biased coin design produces the highest power among the three and that the power gain under global balance is higher than under marginal balance. In addition, the accuracy of normal approximations to the power is assessed by simulations for different scenarios. Numerical values for the simulated powers by the two-sample t test and the analysis of covariance t test are compared with the power obtained by normal approximations.

"A unified approach to bias approximations" (with R.C. Weng). Scand. J. Statist. 48, 1474-1497 (2021).

We provide a unified approach to approximating the bias of the maximum likelihood estimator and the l₂ penalized likelihood estimator for both linear and nonlinear models. The design variables are allowed to be random. The approximations here are justified by very weak expansions. The accuracy of the derived bias formulas is assessed by simulation for several examples. The bias of the ridge estimator in high-dimensional settings is also discussed.

"A bivariate design for a combined phase I/II clinical trial in oncology" (with S.M. Bailey).

This paper reviews the current state of research on bivariate adaptive designs for early phase clinical trials with two competing outcomes, often known as combined phase I/II trials. Such trials aim to find the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) of a new drug, whilst assuring that the efficacious effects of the drug remain above a given level. A new Bayesian design is presented addressing shortfalls of previous designs of this type for these combined trials. The main features of the design are the use of separate response curves for toxicity and efficacy, the modelling of the joint events of toxicity and efficacy using the bivariate Gumbel model, and the incorporation of stopping rules for early termination and identification of incorrect doses ranges. It is shown via simulation that the new design targets the doses most closely associated with the MTD, whose efficacious effects are above a given threshold, with high probability. Comparisons with two recently proposed bivariate designs show that the new design performs favourably with regard to MTD targeting and patient allocation within the trials. A description of the techniques used within the simulation structure is also outlined.

Publications

Refereed Publications

"Group-sequential response-adaptive designs for censored survival outcomes" (with W. Liu). J. Statist. Plann. Inf. 205, 293-305 (2020).

"Combined criteria for dose optimisation in early phase clinical trials" (with M.I. Alam and B. Bogacka). Statist. Med. 38, 4172-4188 (2019).

"Real-time Bayesian parameter estimation for item response models" (with R.C. Weng). Bayesian Anal. 13, 115-137 (2018).

"Pharmacokinetically guided optimum adaptive dose selection in early phase clinical trials" (with M.I. Alam and B. Bogacka). Comput. Statist. Data Anal. 111, 183-202 (2017).

"Imbalance properties of centre-stratified permuted-block and complete randomisation for several treatments in a clinical trial" (with V.V. Anisimov and W.Y. Yeung). Statist. Med. 36, 1302-1318 (2017).

"Statistical inference following covariate-adaptive randomisation: Recent advances". In Modern Adaptive Randomised Clinical Trials: Statistical and Practical Aspects, ed. O. Sverdlov, pp. 155-170 (2015). London: CRC Press.

"Approximate confidence sets for adaptive generalised linear models". In Recent Advances in Applied Mathematics, Modelling and Simulation, eds. N.E. Mastorakis, M. Demiralp, N. Mukhopadhyay and F. Mainardi, pp. 40-42 (2014). Athens: WSEAS Press.

"Corrected confidence intervals based on the signed root transformation for multi-parameter sequentially designed experiments". J. Statist. Plann. Inf. 147, 173-187 (2014).

"Inference following designs which adjust for imbalances in prognostic factors" (with Y. Barbáchano). Clin. Trials 10, 540-551 (2013).

"Response adaptive randomisation". In Encyclopedia of Clinical Trials, Volume 4, eds. R. D'Agostino, L. Sullivan and J. Massaro, pp. 113-119 (2008). New York: Wiley.

"Predictability of designs which adjust for imbalances in prognostic factors" (with Y. Barbáchano and D.R. Robinson). J. Statist. Plann. Inf. 138, 756-767 (2008).

"The duplicate method of uncertainty estimation: Are eight targets enough?" (with J.A. Lyn, M.H. Ramsey, A.P. Damant, R. Wood and K.A. Boon). Analyst 132, 1147-1152 (2007).

"A comparison of adaptive allocation rules for group-sequential binary response clinical trials" (with C.C. Morgan). Statist. Med. 26, 1937-1954 (2007).

"Corrected confidence intervals for secondary parameters following sequential tests" (with R.C. Weng). In Recent Developments in Nonparametric Inference and Probability: Festschrift for Michael Woodroofe, eds. J. Sun, A. DasGupta, V. Melfi and C. Page, pp. 80-104 (2006). Hayward, California: Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

"Sequential procedures for comparing several normal means" (with A.A. Halimeh). J. Statist. Comput. Simul. 76, 519-537 (2006).

"Sequential urn designs with elimination for comparing K ≥ 3 treatments" (with A. Ivanova). Statist. Med. 24, 1995-2009 (2005).

"The use of the triangular test with response-adaptive treatment allocation" (with A. Ivanova). Statist. Med. 24, 1483-1493 (2005).

"A general multi-treatment adaptive design for multivariate responses" (with A. Biswas). Sequential Anal. 24, 139-158 (2005).

"Corrected confidence intervals for adaptive nonlinear regression models" (with M.B. Woodroofe). J. Statist. Plann. Inf. 130, 63-83 (2005).

"Bias calculations for adaptive urn designs" (with A. Ivanova). Sequential Anal. 20, 91-116 (2001).

"Corrected confidence intervals following a sequential adaptive clinical trial with binary responses" (with Z. Govindarajulu). J. Statist. Plann. Inf. 91, 53-64 (2000).

"Corrected confidence sets for sequentially designed experiments: Examples" (with M. Woodroofe). In Multivariate Analysis, Design of of Experiments and Survey Sampling: A Tribute to Jagdish N. Srivastava, ed. S. Ghosh, pp. 135-161 (1999). New York: Marcel Dekker. Reprinted in Sequential Anal. 21, 191-218 (2002).

"A comparison of the randomised play-the-winner rule and the triangular test for clinical trials with binary responses" (with W.F. Rosenberger). Statist. Med. 18, 761-769 (1999).

"Approximate bias calculations for sequentially designed experiments" (with M.B. Woodroofe). Sequential Anal. 17, 1-31 (1998).

"Approximate confidence intervals after a sequential clinical trial comparing two exponential survival curves with censoring" (with M.B. Woodroofe). J. Statist. Plann. Inf. 63, 79-96 (1997).

"Corrected confidence sets for sequentially designed experiments" (with M. Woodroofe). Statist. Sinica 7, 53-74 (1997).

"Corrected confidence intervals after sequential testing with applications to survival analysis" (with M.B. Woodroofe). Biometrika 83, 763-777 (1996).

"Sequential allocation rules for multi-armed clinical trials". J. Statist. Comput. Simul. 52, 239-251 (1995).

Recent Talks

My most recent talks are listed below. In June, I am an invited speaker at the 10th International Workshop on Applied Probability in Thessaloniki and the 50th Scientific Meeting of the Italian Statistical Society in Pisa.

Seminars

"A combined criterion for dose optimisation in early phase clinical trials". Academia Sinica (September 2017).

"Estimation following adaptively randomised clinical trials". National Chengchi University (September 2017).

"Bias calculations for adaptive generalised linear models". University of Southampton (April 2015).

Conference Presentations

"Sequential adaptive designs: Stopping times, bias and optimality". Seventh International Workshop in Sequential Methodologies, Binghamton, New York (June 2019).

"Group-sequential response-adaptive designs for censored survival responses". 14th Workshop on Stochastic Models, Statistics and their Applications, Dresden, Germany (March 2019).

"Bias approximations using expansions for posterior distributions". 2018 World Meeting of the International Society for Bayesian Statistics, Edinburgh (June 2018).

Research Projects for PhD or MPhil Students

Here are details of two possible projects. As mentioned earlier, others are possible, and anyone interested is welcome to contact me. For general information about postgraduate research in Statistics and Probability in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London, please look at our Postgraduate Admissions web page.

Project 1: Estimation following Adaptive Dose-Finding Designs

In early phase trials, there is interest in finding a dose of a drug that is not too toxic but sufficiently efficacious. Since the number of patients in these trials is usually quite small, estimates of model parameters can be very variable, and hence decisions based on these may be unreliable. In particular, the estimates can be noticeably biased. A natural question is whether less biased estimates can be derived. Point and interval estimation following the continual reassessment method was considered by O'Quigley (1992, Biometrics 48, 853-862), who studied three types of estimators - the maximum likelihood estimator, Bayesian estimators and one-step estimators. In each case, approximate confidence intervals for the maximum tolerated dose were constructed by using a normal approximation. There are many potential extensions to this work. Is it possible to apply the ideas to more complex models? Can the performance of the designs be improved by using less biased estimates? A good starting point would be to study the bias of the estimates in a one-parameter design where only toxicity is considered.

During the course of the project, it would be necessary to learn about dose-finding designs and to gain experience of Monte Carlo methods.

Project 2: Efficient Multiple Tests with Applications to Genetics

There are often a large number of hypotheses of interest in gene association analysis, but limited numbers of observations available. Consequently, multiple testing procedures are sought which make the most efficient use of the data whilst controlling the false discovery rate. Most of the proposed procedures are based on one-stage designs, which often lead to tests with poor power, since there is only a small number of observations for each hypothesis. Zehetmayer, Bauer and Posch (2005, Bioinformatics 21, 3771-3777) showed that, for normally distributed data, a two-stage design based on combining the p-values from a screening stage and a testing stage can significantly improve the power. However, there are a number of open problems. Can the power of these designs be further improved by allowing unequal allocation during the testing stage? Is there a worthwhile improvement in power if three stages are used? Can analogous designs be developed for other response types, such as binary data? A good starting point would be to study the effect of unequal allocation on a one-stage design.

During the course of the project, it would be necessary to learn about adaptive testing based on p-values and to gain experience of Monte Carlo methods.

Research Grants

During 2008-09, I was awarded a joint research grant with Y. Zhou at the University of Reading by the Medical Research Council (MRC). Details of this are given below.

MRC Workshop on Dose-Finding Methodology in Early Phase Clinical Trials

This is a Fast Tracking Drug Development Initiative Grant to hold a three-day workshop at the University of Reading. More information about the workshop is available here. The project deliverables are as follows:

1. To provide an intensive programme of talks from world experts on current trends in dose-finding methodology for early phase clinical trials, together with small-group discussions, where open problems can be addressed and progress made.

2. Participants will be able to learn about state-of-the-art adaptive designs for early phase clinical trials and related ethical issues, exchange research ideas, establish collaborative research links and discuss how to implement the methodology in practice.

3. To provide a report on the outcomes, which will highlight the main issues raised on each of the topics covered and summarise the current status of any open problems, and thus emphasise researchable areas of interest and important methodological gaps.

4. By exchanging research ideas and establishing collaborative links, the workshop will lead to joint grant applications for funding, preparation of papers for presentation at future international conferences and publication in relevant leading statistical journals.

Administrative Responsibilities

I am currently a member of the Editorial Board for Sequential Analysis, and an Associate Editor for BMC Medical Research Methodology and Contemporary Clinical Trials.

For the School of Mathematical Sciences, I am a London Taught Course Centre Representative and the Senior Tutor.

Further Information

I have a BSc degree from Portsmouth Polytechnic, and MSc and DPhil degrees from the University of Oxford. I came to my present job at Queen Mary in 2005, and immediately before that was a Senior Lecturer in Statistics at the University of Sussex. During 1993-95, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship Grant in connection with the visit. Since 1993, I have been a Chartered Statisticican, and, since 1998, a Chartered Mathematician. I am a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and a Member of the Biometric Society, the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics and the Bernoulli Society.

One of my favourite pastimes is travelling. During August and September 2018, I made a three-week trip to Thailand. One of the highlights was a visit to Nan, where there is a wonderful array of beautiful temples to explore. In particular, Wat Phumin has exquisite murals, with the most famous scene involving a man whispering into the ear of a woman. Other high points included a walk across the 800-metre long Su Tong Pae bamboo bridge in a mountain valley near Pai. This stretches over lush green rice fields and the Mae Sa Nga River to link Wat Hauy Kai Kiri at one end with the village of Ban Pam Bok at the other. One of my other pastimes is learning Thai. I am currently living in Hove.

Contact Details

Steve Coad

Office

125, Mathematics Building

E-mail

D.S.Coad@qmul.ac.uk

Phone

020 7882 5484 (from outside UK +44 20 7882 5484)

Fax

020 7882 7684 (from outside UK +44 20 7882 7684)

Postal Address

Dr. D.S. Coad
School of Mathematical Sciences
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS
United Kingdom

The contents of this Home Page are my own responsibility, not those of Queen Mary, University of London, or any of its Units.

[School of Mathematical Sciences] [Queen Mary, University of London]