| Julian P.T. Higgins | |
| Birth Name: | Julian Piers Thomas Higgins |
| Birth Place: | Middlesbrough |
| Nationality: | British |
| Fields: | Biostatistics |
| Workplaces: | Imperial College London University College London University of York Medical Research Council University of Bristol |
| Education: | Durham University, University of Cambridge, and The University of Reading |
| Thesis Title: | Exploiting information in random effects meta-analysis |
| Thesis Url: | https://europepmc.org/abstract/eth/387704 |
| Thesis Year: | 1997 |
| Doctoral Advisors: | )--> |
| Known For: | Meta-analysis |
| Awards: | Cochrane Collaboration's Thomas C. Chalmers Award; Society for Research Synthesis Methodology's Ingram Olkin Award for distinguished lifetime achievement in research synthesis methodology; the Campbell Collaboration's Frederick Mosteller Award for Distinctive Contributions to Systematic Reviewing |
| Spouses: | )--> |
| Partners: | )--> |
Julian P. T. Higgins is a British biostatistician, Professor of Evidence Synthesis and Director of Research at the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Bristol.[1] Higgins was previously Chair in Evidence Synthesis at the University of York, and Programme Leader at the MRC Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge. He is also a founding trustee and a Past-President of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology.[2]
Higgins was born in North Yorkshire, where he attended the Stokesley School. He completed his undergraduate studies in mathematics at Durham University in 1992, earned a diploma in mathematical statistics from the University of Cambridge in 1993, and obtained a PhD in applied statistics from the University of Reading in 1997.[3]
Higgins is a Senior Investigator at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). An expert on meta-analysis and systematic review methodologies, Professor Higgins contributes actively to the Cochrane Collaboration, where he also serves as Senior Methods Advisor. He is a co-editor of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions and has been named an ISI Highly Cited researcher each year since 2015.[4]
On 28 August 2019 Higgins, along with Jonathan Sterne, Jelena Savović, and colleagues, published in The British Medical Journal an article detailing "RoB 2", a revised tool for assessing risk of bias in randomized trials. [5] Assessing risk of bias is regarded as an essential component of a systematic review. The most commonly used tool for assessing risk of bias to date has been the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool, which Professor Higgins introduced in 2008.[6] Higgins is the most cited author of The British Medical Journal.[7]