Senior Data Manager

Data Management

Left the Unit in 2020

Work and interests

Adam joined the MRC Epidemiology Unit in 2006 as the Senior Data Manager, and then grew a data management team to handle all aspects of data management required by the Unit. This included the creation of strong database and programming groups to develop specific solutions to improve the efficiency, quality, cost effectiveness and throughput of data for science research. He was also responsible for ensuring high quality data protection and security for all Unit data, including 30 plus studies.

Adam was particularily interested in the innovation of methods to improve the quality, delivery and cost reduction of data capture and preparation for research, and is currently aiming, through the adoption of standardised approaches to data handling, to enable common works flows and processes to work for all studies the Unit may instigate. Adam contributed to the MRC’s national data management working group and represented the Unit on the Addenbrookes Clinical Trials Unit data management committee. Adam left the Unit in April 2020.

Background and experience

Graduating in Agricultural Engineering from CIT (Cranfield Institute of Technology), Adam Dickinson spent 19 years working in Hydraulics, Civil, Environment, Water Engineering and Management, including carrying out strategic research into soil erosion, land management, engineering structures and water quality. Based with HR Wallingford (formally the UK Governments’ Hydraulic Research Laboratory), projects included research and contract work in the Philippines, Thailand, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Tunisia and for organisations including ODA (now DFID – UK Department for International Development), UN-FAO, Asian and African Development Banks, World Bank, SADCC (South African Development Cooperation Community), WMO organisations, Governments of Thailand, Philippnes, Sri Lanka, Botswana, Pakistan, Civil Engineers; Mott MacDonald and Halcrows, Southern Water on aspects of land and water quality and management.

This work included field and lab research, software development, remote sensing, GIS (Geographic Information System) development, soil erosion and sediment transport measurement, low water flow and groundwater modelling and urban draining design and planning. Adam has a number of research papers published and contributions to conference proceedings, reports, books, and international manuals.

Adam moved in 2000, to work for the Clinical Trials and Services Unit (CTSU) of Oxford University in a number of aspects of epidemiological data handling and processing, including work in the Perspective Studies Collaboration (PSC) and the Fibrinogen Studies Collaborations (FSC). For the latter this included enabling the collection, merging and standardisation of data from numerous studies to establish the data set for a pooled meta-analysis of over 30 cardiovascular studies and over 150,000 participants, including the development of a standardised approach to handling the data.

Adam moved with the Fibrinogen Studies Collaboration to the Molecular Epidemiology Unit, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge as a British Heart Foundation funded Research Associate to see the completion of the the FSC and the establishment of the Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration, before joining the MRC Epidemiology Unit in 2006.