Student Internship in Biostatistics (m/w/d; from June 2023 for 3 months)

Student Internship in Biostatistics (m/w/d; from June 2023 for 3 months)

The Position

You will be part of the Biostatistics team located in Basel, which consists of about 60 statisticians and is a part of the PD data and statistical science department. As strategic partners in drug development, we apply our drug development and statistical expertise to the design of clinical development plans, clinical studies, and non-clinical experiments.

Project description and anticipated outputs

The randomized controlled trial is considered the gold standard to evaluate the efficacy of a new treatment. However, during study conduct, different type of events occur after randomization or treatment initiation (e.g. lack of adherence, discontinuation, use of rescue medication, use per-protocol prohibited therapies), which to a different extent, affect either/both the interpretation or/and the existence of data in relation to the clinical question of interest. These events are called intercurrent events (ICEs). The IHC E9 estimand addendum recommends the framework to formulate estimands under the occurrence of ICEs, where the traditional intent-to treat-analysis (ITT) has an analogous: the treatment policy (TP) for ICEs: i.e. the estimation of treatment effects regardless of the occurrence of ICEs. However, the ITT estimand lacks direct clinical interpretation and the ITT/TP analysis reported alone is inadequate as the only effect measure in such trials.

We want to explore statistical methodologies for RCTs with longitudinal continuous endpoints to estimate treatment effects accounting for ICEs for estimands that will complement the ITT/TP corresponding one. For instance, to study efficacy had a patient adhered to treatment (used as indicated), had a patient adhered to treatment until toxicity then discontinued or switched to therapy B, etc. We want to compare various estimators for a number of a-priori defined clinically relevant estimands and to explore specifically methods that account for covariates and treatment status that change over time, namely, G-estimation and others from the causal inference literature, against currently used methodologies.

We intent to have the following outputs at the end of the internship

• A simulation study comparing G-estimation with conventional approaches, and methods implementation using data from historical trials as motivating examples
• Contributions to a scientific manuscript to establish the method in the scientific literature/ or a white paper describing the statistical foundations and implementation of studied methods
• R-code ready to be streamlined for the analysis of RCT data

Who you are

You are currently enrolled in a Master's or PhD program or have completed your studies (only appropriate for finished Master students) a maximum of 12 months ago in the fields of statistics or a related field

Furthermore your are

• Good command of English language (written, spoken)
• Team player, good communicator, focused working style with mindset to deliver

To be considered your application needs to:

• Include a valid certificate of enrollment, a cover letter and a CV. Non EU-EFTA citizens have to provide a certificate of mandatory internship in addition.
• Include a short description of your academic courses / other experience relating to R, inferential statistics, Statistical modeling, simulation, and clinical trials.

Who we are

At Roche, more than 100,000 people across 100 countries are pushing back the frontiers of healthcare. Working together, we've become one of the world's leading research-focused healthcare groups. Our success is built on innovation, curiosity and diversity.

Basel is the headquarters of the Roche Group and one of its most important centres of pharmaceutical research. Over 10,700 employees from over 100 countries come together at our Basel/Kaiseraugst site, which is one of Roche`s largest sites. Read more.

Besides extensive development and training opportunities, we offer flexible working options, 18 weeks of maternity leave and 10 weeks of gender independent partnership leave. Our employees also benefit from multiple services on site such as child-care facilities, medical services, restaurants and cafeterias, as well as various employee events.

We believe in the power of diversity and inclusion, and strive to identify and create opportunities that enable all people to bring their unique selves to Roche.

Roche is an Equal Opportunity Employer.