Dr. Kristian Thorlund is a Bayesian Biostatistician focusing on innovative clinical trial designs and complex methods for evidence synthesis and health care decision-making. Over the past half decade, Dr. Thorlund has further specialized in deep learning artificial intelligence, particularly with the application of large language models and small language models to the medical literature. Dr. Thorlund received his PhD in Biostatistics from McMaster University, Ontario and MSc in Statistics and Mathematics from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He currently holds a part-time adjunct professor position at McMaster University, and has previously been visiting associate professor at Stanford University and adjunct faculty at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Thorlund has published close to 200 articles in peer reviewed scientific journals, written several book chapters and developed many open-source statistical software tools. In ‘16, ‘18, and ‘20, Clarivate (Web of Science) named him among the most highly cited researchers in the world. This put him among the top 14 cited professors at McMaster University and among the top 100 cited professors in Canada. His current H-Index of 67 with over 28,000 citations (Google Scholar, July 2024). Dr. Thorlund has also given well over 100 invited lectures, panel sessions, and specialized workshops at large international conferences, and has supervised and mentored several biostatisticians and medical researchers.
Dr. Thorlund has co-founded several companies in the biostatistical and analytics space. Between 2012 and 2015 served as the managing partner of Redwood Outcomes (acquired by Precision4Medicine Group, Nov 2015), which at the time was the world’s leading commercial provider of network meta-analysis). Between 2017 and 2019 he served as the Presided for MTEK Sciences (Acquired by Cytel, Dec 2019), which specialized in innovative (adaptive) clinical trial designs, and played a seminal role in introducing these biostatistical techniques to Global Health clinical trial, prior to their wide adaptation during the CoViD pandemic. In this context, he also served as the Clinical Trial Co-Lead at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Over the recent half decade, Dr. Thorlund has co-founded, seeded, and advised a number of artificial intelligence companies. These include COA-AI (co-developed with Clinical Outcomes Solutions Inc.) which enable clinical outcome assessment landscape reviews of patient reported outcomes to be conducted 5-10 times faster than traditional fully manual reviews; as well as Redwood AI which enable chemical drug manufacturers to rapidly identify synthesis pathways for drug therapeutics that are both cheaper and sustainable with respect to the local supply-chain of commercial chemical compounds.
Dr. Thorlund is collaborating with Section for Biostatistics and Evidence-Based Research at the Parker Institute, bringing his extensive expertise in Bayesian biostatistics, advanced clinical trial designs, and evidence synthesis. His work will focus on integrating cutting-edge statistical methods with deep learning and artificial intelligence, particularly in enhancing meta-analytic techniques and optimizing clinical outcome assessments. As a collaborator, Dr. Thorlund will contribute to the development of innovative analytical tools and approaches to improve decision-making processes in healthcare research, while also supporting mentorship and the advancement of evidence-based practices.