Julian Higgins

Biography

julian Higgins is Professor of Evidence Synthesis at the School of Social and Community Medicine, at the University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. He leads the Bristol Appraisal and Review of Research (BARR) group within the Centre for Research Synthesis and Decision Analysis (CReSyDA).

Research Interest

He has wide-ranging research interests in the areas of systematic review and meta-analysis.  Among Julian’s research contributions are: a Bayesian approach to network meta-analysis; the I-squared statistic to quantify inconsistency across studies in a meta-analysis; simple prediction intervals for random-effects meta-analysis; a general framework for individual participant data meta-analysis; a library of prior distributions for between-study variation in a meta-analysis; and the development of risk-of-bias assessment tools for clinical trials and other study designs. Julian is a past President of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology and a former member of the Cochrane Collaboration Steering Group. He is still an active contributor to Cochrane, co-editing the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions since 2003.  Julian is a multiple winner of the Thomas C Chalmers Award from Cochrane; received the Frederick Mosteller Award for distinctive contributions to systematic reviewing from the Campbell Collaboration in 2010, and was awarded the Olkin Award for distinguished lifetime achievement by the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology in 2016.