Robert Hills

Robert Hills studied mathematics at the University of Oxford, where his DPhil was on exploration of symmetries with applications to superconductivity. He joined the CTSU in 1993 as a programmer on the QUASAR trial in colorectal cancer. Following a brief period working in low temperature physics at the University of Nottingham, he moved to the University of Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit (BCTU) in 1997.There, he worked on clinical trials in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, Alzheimer’s Disease, women’s health and many others as well as large scale individual patient data meta-analyses of treatment for colorectal cancer.

In 2006, he moved to Cardiff University as statistical lead for the NCRI/MRC trials in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. During his 12 years in Cardiff he was head of the Haematology Clinical Trials Unit, and latterly led on clinical cancer research methodology and haematological malignancies. The novel designs used in these trials allow the clinical value of disease monitoring to be evaluated, as well as numerous targeted therapies in designs that allow for an early change from an unpromising new therapy to one with greater potential. Additionally, he continued his work on the integration of laboratory and clinical data, and on individual patient data meta-analyses, where he demonstrated a survival benefit for gentuzumab ozogamicin in AML.

In 2018, he moved back to the University of Oxford where he is part of the Early Breast Cancer Trialists' Collaborative Group.