Video-on-Demand Library


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18 November 2025

Join our webinar to learn how algorithmic allocation—like genetic algorithms and simulated annealing—creates better-balanced treatment groups than simple randomization, especially in small clinical and in vivo studies. We'll explain the theory, show performance comparisons with random and exhaustive methods, and discuss practical extensions and computational benefits.

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Randomizing subjects into treatment groups reduces confounding in clinical and preclinical studies, but simple complete randomization can fail in small trials (especially in vivo) where group imbalances are more likely. More structured methods (e.g., randomized block designs) help, but algorithmic allocation gives the best balance. One effective algorithmic approach uses a genetic-algorithm framework inspired by evolutionary theory: it searches for partitions of the dataset that minimize a predefined fitness function measuring imbalance. Compared with simple random allocation and exhaustive search, this genetic algorithm produced more homogeneous experimental groups, ran far faster than exhaustive search, and its computational advantage grows quickly with more subjects and more design factors. Extensions and related approaches (for example, simulated annealing) can further adapt or improve the method.

12 November 2025

Data visualisation can be an efficient way to help better understanding the data. Bodo Kirsch moderates the discussion on avoiding common pitfalls. There is a scroll story available on the Wonderful Wednesday blog.

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The message delivered by the visualisation depends on certain design choices. Obviously, the plot type is very important, but also are the range of axes, the choice of colours and which data is actually shown. The next challenge is about seasonal plots, but not just for fun. See the Wonderful Wednesday homepage for more detail.

Wonderful Wednesdays are brought to you by the Visualisation SIG. The Wonderful Wednesday team includes Bodo Kirsch, Zachary Skrivanek, Lorenz Uhlmann, Steve Mallett, Rhys Warham, Mark Baillie, Paolo Eusebi, Martin Brown, Benjamin Lang, Lovemore Gakava, Aditeya Pandey


21 October 2025

This webinar is dedicated to the topic of stability modelling; a fantastic opportunity to hear from statisticians working in the CMC field, with open question and answers. Brought to you by the CMC Statistical Network Europe (CSNE) SIG.

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This webinar is dedicated to the topic of stability modelling; a fantastic opportunity to hear from statisticians working in the CMC field, with open question and answers. Brought to you by the CMC Statistical Network Europe (CSNE) SIG.

Speakers: Warren Roche (Sanofi), Bernard Francq (GSK), Thomas Zahel (Körber-Pharma)

08 October 2025

Data was provided from a simulated study in fatty liver disease, and participants were invited to create visualisations to explore possible differential effects in subgroups.

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The quality and effectiveness of figures in publications could easily be improved by small changes in use of colour, proximity, and space. An actual objective should be formulated for each visualisation. Data was provided from a simulated study in fatty liver disease, and participants were invited to create visualisations to explore possible differential effects in subgroups. See the Wonderful Wednesday homepage for more detail.

Wonderful Wednesdays are brought to you by the Visualisation SIG. The Wonderful Wednesday team includes Bodo Kirsch, Zachary Skrivanek, Lorenz Uhlmann, Steve Mallett, Rhys Warham, Mark Baillie, Paolo Eusebi, Martin Brown, Benjamin Lang, Lovemore Gakava, Aditeya Pandey

30 September 2025

In recent years, instrumental variable (IV) methods are being increasingly used by pharmaceutical companies in the process of drug development. For example, genetics-based IV methodology (a.k.a Mendelian randomisation) is used extensively in R&D departments to evaluate the promise of potential drug targets through the combined analysis of observational cohort and genome-wide association study data. At the other end of the drug development cycle, IV approaches are emerging as a key tool for quantifying treatment effects in pivotal clinical trials affected by intercurrent events, as part of the Estimand Framework. The webinar is targeted at statisticians working in the pharmaceutical industry, and the objective is to 1) provide a basic understanding of IV methodology including how it relates to causal inference, and 2) present two inspirational pharma-relevant applications.

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A natural experiment is an observational study that enables causal conclusions to be drawn. In a natural experiment, individuals are divided either at random or in a way that mimics randomization (known as quasi-randomization), but this division is performed by a natural process or an artificial distinction rather than by an investigator. The variable that divides individuals is known as an instrumental variable.  In this talk, I will provide an introduction to instrumental variables: what they are, and how they can be used to make causal claims. I will then present Mendelian randomization, the use of genetic variants as instrumental variables. Due to inherent randomness in the process of genetic inheritance, genetic variants act somewhat like randomization. As the majority of drugs influence proteins and genes encode proteins, there is a specific relevance for Mendelian randomization to the drug development pipeline. Mendelian randomization can provide evidence on target validation, re-purposing, safety signals, mechanistic relevance, and effect heterogeneity: are pathways worth drugging, what outcomes do they affect, how do they affect them, and who would most benefit from intervention? The talk will be illustrated with examples of targets for existing and emerging drugs.

Speakers: Jack Bowden, Novo Nordisk and University of Exeter and Stephen Burgess, University of Cambridge

23 September 2025

AI agents are large language models equipped with tools that can autonomously tackle challenging tasks. This talk will explore how generative AI agents can enable biomedical discovery. I’ll first introduce the Virtual Lab—a collaborative team of AI scientist agents conducting in silico research meetings to tackle open-ended R&D projects. As an example application, the Virtual Lab designed new nanobody binders to recent Covid variants that we experimentally validated. Then I will present CellVoyager, a computational biology agent that analyzes complex genomics data to derive new insights.

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AI agents are large language models equipped with tools that can autonomously tackle challenging tasks. This talk will explore how generative AI agents can enable biomedical discovery. I’ll first introduce the Virtual Lab—a collaborative team of AI scientist agents conducting in silico research meetings to tackle open-ended R&D projects. As an example application, the Virtual Lab designed new nanobody binders to recent Covid variants that we experimentally validated. Then I will present CellVoyager, a computational biology agent that analyzes complex genomics data to derive new insights. 

Speaker: James Zou, Stanford University

10 September 2025

In a recent publication of a clinical trial a pair of figures has been attached, that invites a discussion on graphic design principles. This discussion is moderated by Bodo Kirsch. An interactive application to generate visualisations and the respective R code is available via the Wonderful Wednesday blog.

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The quality and effectiveness of figures in publications could easily be improved by small changes in use of colour, proximity, and space. An actual objective should be formulated for each visualisation. Always ask why! The next challenge is to explore possible subgroup effects in the current data example. See the Wonderful Wednesday homepage for more detail.

Wonderful Wednesdays are brought to you by the Visualisation SIG. The Wonderful Wednesday team includes Bodo Kirsch, Zachary Skrivanek, Lorenz Uhlmann, Steve Mallett, Rhys Warham, Mark Baillie, Paolo Eusebi, Martin Brown, Benjamin Lang, Lovemore Gakava, Aditeya Pandey

13 August 2025

In clinical trials, intercurrent events are post-baseline occurrences that affect the interpretation or existence of outcome data. Rhys Warham is presenting visualisations that help understand the possible impact of these events on the interpretation of the study results. All visualisations are available on the Wonderful Wednesday blog.

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The side-by-side display of the treatment comparison using different approaches of handling intercurrent events is a powerful presentation of the robustness of the results. Anker the display at the intercurrent event can help understand the data, but special care should be taken on possible bias before drawing conclusions. The next challenge is to improve an existing plot from a recent publication of study results. See the Wonderful Wednesday homepage for more detail.

Wonderful Wednesdays are brought to you by the Visualisation SIG. The Wonderful Wednesday team includes Bodo Kirsch, Zachary Skrivanek, Lorenz Uhlmann, Steve Mallett, Rhys Warham, Mark Baillie, Paolo Eusebi, Martin Brown, Benjamin Lang, Lovemore Gakava, Aditeya Pandey



09 July 2025

This month’s webinar builds on the topic from last month (improving an existing plot from a recent publication on a hyperkalemia trial), but focuses on visualising patient-level data (generated with AI) rather than group-level summaries. Rhys Warham leads the panel discussion. All visualisations are available on the Wonderful Wednesday blog.

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Several visualisations were discussed, all forming part of a wider submission. The discussion highlights how a series of data visualisations can be used to investigate and identify key relationships in the data, and then to subsequently highlight these key relationships when communicating findings. The challenge for the next webinar was set, which will be to use visualisations to explore how the handling of intercurrent events might influence the comparative efficacy of two treatments. See the Wonderful Wednesday homepage for more detail.

Wonderful Wednesdays are brought to you by the Visualisation SIG. The Wonderful Wednesday team includes Bodo Kirsch, Zachary Skrivanek, Lorenz Uhlmann, Steve Mallett, Rhys Warham, Mark Baillie, Paolo Eusebi, Martin Brown, Benjamin Lang, Lovemore Gakava and Aditeya Pandey

07 July 2025

This work highlights methodological challenges in isolating a vaccine's effect on progression to severe disease after infection.

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This work highlights methodological challenges in isolating a vaccine's effect on progression to severe disease after infection. Vaccines can reduce an individual's risk of infection and their risk of progression to disease given infection. The latter effect is less commonly estimated but is relevant for risk communication and vaccine impact modeling. Using a motivating example from the COVID-19 literature, we note how vaccine effectiveness against progression can appear to increase over time in settings where true biological strengthening is unlikely. We use mathematical modeling to demonstrate how this phenomenon can occur when there is an underlying vulnerable subpopulation with poor vaccine response against infection and progression. We describe a modeling framework to link underlying immunology and post-vaccination outcomes that we use to further examine this problem.

25 June 2025

The iRISE (improving Reproducibility In SciencE) project aims to deepen our understanding of the drivers contributing to poor reproducibility and to conduct a detailed evaluation – including primary research – of the effectiveness of interventions to increase reproducibility.

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The iRISE (improving Reproducibility In SciencE) project aims to deepen our understanding of the drivers contributing to poor reproducibility and to conduct a detailed evaluation – including primary research – of the effectiveness of interventions to increase reproducibility. The project’s work package (WP) on theory is dedicated to clarifying terms and underlying concepts related to reproducibility. To ensure efficient communication within the iRISE consortium, we produced a glossary with working definitions of terms including reproducibility, replicability, and replication.  A concept important in pre-clinical drug discovery, translatability, was for example defined as "the ability to apply research discoveries from experimental models to applications that directly benefit humans".  The definitions are complemented with measures to quantify different types of reproducibility, and theories on the possible factors leading to irreproducibility.

To view the presented slides, please click here.

11 June 2025

This month it’s all about improving an existing plot from a recent publication on a hyperkalemia trial. Bodo Kirsch is leading the panel discussion on dos and don’ts of effective visualisations. All visualisations are available on the Wonderful Wednesday blog.

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The discussion touched various issues in scientific data visualisation, like messaging, axis limits, background grids and shading, interpolation, choice of legend, reference lines and explanatory text. This was followed by a demonstration of instant patient level data simulation using AI. The next challenge is to include these patient level data into the graphical display of the hyperkalemia trial results. See the Wonderful Wednesday homepage for more detail.

Wonderful Wednesdays are brought to you by the Visualisation SIG. The Wonderful Wednesday team includes Bodo Kirsch, Zachary Skrivanek, Lorenz Uhlmann, Steve Mallett, Rhys Warham, Mark Baillie, Paolo Eusebi, Martin Brown, Benjamin Lang, Lovemore Gakava and Aditeya Pandey

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