Alex McMahon

Alex originally graduated from Glasgow University with a degree in Statistics. After university he went into industry working in the Medical Statistics department at Glaxo Group Research, and then for Data Analysis and Research Limited. Both of these jobs involved working on (mostly randomised) Clinical Trials of pharmaceutical treatments.

After this he moved to an academic job in the Medicines Monitoring Unit at Dundee University, doing an on-the-job PhD on study design and analysis of pharmacoepidemiological studies. After this Alex moved to the Robertson Centre for Biostatistics at Glasgow University. As well as doing epidemiological studies (some of them in dentistry with colleagues at the dental school) and clinical trials, he also managed the West of Scotland statistical advisory service doing over 300 of the consultations himself.

In October 2007 he took up the post of Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology within the section of Community Oral Health at Glasgow University Dental School. He teaches the Research Methods course for post-graduate students, supervises PhD students, and has an honorary NHS position as Consultant Epidemiologist with the Information and Statistics Division which often involves working on the Scottish National Dental Inspection Programme.

Alex has on-going interests in the design and analysis of observational and experimental human studies, and currently works mostly on dental and cancer epidemiological projects. He has designed a randomised controlled trial of fluoride varnish treatments for the Childsmile Programme. To date he has published around 110 peer reviewed papers. He is on the editorial boards of both “Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety” and "Frontiers Public Health".