Luc Boone was born in Belgium and holds a master’s degree in Biostatistics obtained at KU Leuven. He started working at the EORTC department of statistics as a research fellow at the beginning of 2022.

Prior to working at the EORTC, he worked as a statistician for the Flemish Department of Health.

Luc Describes himself as an open and outgoing person. He enjoys any type of sports activity.

Luigi Lim joined the EORTC in December 2022 as a hybrid fellow in Quality of Life and Biostatistics. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from the University of the Philippines. After that, he pursued his Master of Statistics and Data Science (Specialization: Biostatistics) at Hasselt University in Belgium with the support of the VLIR-UOS Scholarship. Previously, Luigi worked at the Central Bank of the Philippines where he studied and developed models pertaining to systemic risk.

Luigi will be working on the CATAPULT (Cancer Clinical Trials Pooling of Quality of Life Data) project to validate several objectives, which includes the prognostic value of baseline QoL and change scores using a user-ready independent HRQoL database on the QLQ-C30. He will also be involved in the FDA qualification project, SISAQOL, improving compliance and analysis of RCTs.

Hannah Puhr joined the EORTC as a medical fellow in November 2022. She is originally from Austria and received her Medical Degree at the Medical University of Vienna. During her studies, she has done several internships abroad in Hungary, Germany and Switzerland. After finishing her studies, she started working at the University Hospital in Vienna at the Division of Oncology. So far, she has done 4 years of training in internal medicine and oncology. Her main research focus in Vienna was on gastroesophageal cancer patients. Her project at the EORTC will focus on eligibility criteria of clinical studies to further improve patient management and to address real-life cohorts

Peggy Giasafaki joined the EORTC at the end of February 2022 as a fellow in Biostatistics. She obtained his BSc in mathematics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and she holds a Master of Statistics from Athens University of Economics and Business. She has worked as Credit Risk Analyst in a Greek company, where she carried out projects about validation of Credit Scoring models via Statistical methods and techniques for Romanian Financial Institutions. Her research project as a Fellow in the Statistics Department at EORTC will be focused on meta-analysis for the GI group.

Debaleena Sain joined EORTC as a Fellow Statistician on April 2022. She is from India and holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Statistics from University of Calcutta and Presidency University, respectively. She completed her PhD in Applied Statistics from University of California, Riverside, U.S.A., where her research was focused on time-varying joint modelling of longitudinal and time-to-event data. At EORTC, she will work with the Brain Tumour Group

Ridwan Oyebayo Olaniran is a Nigerian statistician with a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in statistics from the University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria (UNILORIN), as well as a PhD in statistics from the Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia. He worked on the development and application of Bayesian random forest for cancer classification, as well as predicting tumor sizes and survival in cancer patients, in his PhD thesis.

In January 2022, he began working as a biostatistician fellow at the EORTC, where he collaborates on research initiatives with the MINDACT Breast Cancer Group (BCG). He worked as a Biostatistician at the Department of Statistics, Faculty of Physical Sciences, University of Ilorin before joining EORTC. Ridwan is passionate about using current and precise statistical methods to improve the lives of cancer patients all over the world.

Teodora Lalova is Bulgarian. She obtained her LL.M. degree at KU Leuven (Belgium) in 2018, specializing in International and European Business law. She holds a Master of Law diploma (2016) from Sofia University (Bulgaria). Her previous professional experience includes various internships, both in the private sector (at an acclaimed Bulgarian law firm, active in the field of commercial and business law), and at public institutions, such as Sofia Regional Court, and the Pardons Committee at the President of the Republic of Bulgaria.
Teodora joined the EORTC as a fellow in September 2018. She is conducting legal research in the sphere of Cancer Survivorship and the right to be forgotten.
The project, in which Teodora is involved, provides also the foundation for her PhD studies at KU Leuven, where she is working under the supervision of Prof I. Huys (Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences), and the co-supervision of Prof P. Valcke (Faculty of Law).

Robbe Saesen is Belgian and joined the EORTC in October 2018. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences, as well as a Master’s degree in Drug Development, both of which he obtained at the University of Leuven, Belgium. During his studies, he became fascinated by clinical research, which is why he decided to pursue a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy research unit of the University of Leuven, under the mentorship of Prof. Isabelle Huys.
His PhD project is organized in collaboration with the EORTC, where he is working under the supervision of Dr. Denis Lacombe on re-engineering the process of clinical cancer research in today’s data-driven healthcare systems. His research will mainly be qualitative in nature.

Emma Willems is a Belgian fellow who joined the EORTC in September 2019. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Economics and concluded her Master’s degree in International Business. Both degrees obtained at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium. She worked as an intern in the National Bank of Belgium at the international statistics department. Her work at the bank overlapped with her Master’s thesis topic where she reviewed the effectiveness of the European governance structure regarding crisis prevention. The interest in governance and research remained, as for which she decided to pursue a PhD project in collaboration with the Free University of Brussels and the EORTC. This fellowship is focused on reviewing the governance structure of the EORTC as a non-profit organization.