Rate My Professor Laura Gray

Professor Laura Gray is Professor of Medical Statistics in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Leicester, serving as Departmental Research Director and Co-Lead of the Biostatistics Research Group. She previously worked as a Medical Statistician in the Division of Stroke at the University of Nottingham from 2003 to 2008 and joined the University of Leicester as a Lecturer in the Department of Health Sciences in 2008, advancing to her current professorial role in 2018. An NIHR Senior Investigator, she leads the data2Health theme of the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration East Midlands, focusing on methodological translation and use of large-scale linked data resources. She is also a key named researcher in the NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre.

Her research specializes in the identification, prevention, and management of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and other long-term conditions through complex interventions, combined with methodological expertise in the design and analysis of clinical trials—particularly cluster and stepped wedge designs—development and validation of prognostic models, and evidence synthesis. Professor Gray has co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed papers, with 138 published in the last 10 years, achieving a Google Scholar h-index of 54 and more than 12,000 citations. Her publications have influenced policy, appearing in 48 documents including WHO reports, UK Government guidelines, NICE and SIGN recommendations, and European Agency for Safety and Health at Work publications. Notable works include 'Mind the gap: covariate constrained randomisation can protect against substantial power loss in parallel cluster randomised trials' (BMC Medical Research Methodology, 2022), 'Ethnicity and clinical outcomes in COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis' (EClinicalMedicine, 2020), and 'Effectiveness of the Stand More AT (SMArT) Work intervention: cluster randomised controlled trial' (BMJ, 2018). As co-investigator, she contributes to major grants such as MiFoot (NIHR Programme Grants, £2.138 million), M3 Research Programme (£2.571 million), and UK-REACH (£2.129 million). A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2014, she leads teaching on the MSc Medical Statistics and MRes Applied Health Research programmes and supervises PhD students on topics including complex evidence synthesis and diabetes screening in dental practices. She serves as External Examiner for the University of Oxford's MSc Global Health Science & Epidemiology.