Maria Teixeira joined the EORTC in September 2024. She is Portuguese and holds a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Pharmacy from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Coimbra, as well as a master’s degree in Regulation and Evaluation of Medicines and Health Products, from the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Lisbon. Maria has experience in the pharmaceutical industry and regulatory bodies, with a background in pharmacovigilance and regulatory affairs, but spent the last years focusing on clinical trials. First at Portuguese Ethics Committee assessing clinical trials submissions, financial contracts and meeting with clinical experts. And later supporting the study conduct from study start up to close out activities and final submission to the competent authorities. At EORTC her focus will be on developing a strategy to ensure EORTC Quality of Life Group measures fit changing standards for cancer clinical trials.

Lyse Naomi Wamba joined the EORTC as a Biostatistician Fellow in November 2024. Born and raised in Cameroon, she moved to Belgium in 2017 to pursue a Master’s in Statistics, followed by a PhD at KU Leuven. Her PhD, conducted in collaboration with the University Hospital of Leuven, focused on the application of machine learning tools for predicting patients’ length of stay. At EORTC, she will be working with the Brain Tumour Group, starting with an assessment of the prognostic significance of haematological toxicity induced by a specific polychemotherapy. In her free time, she enjoys reading a good book.

Laure Musekera Murerwa joined the EORTC in November 2024. Raised in Belgium, she holds a master’s degree in statistics from UC Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve. Before joining the EORTC, she held a position at the Belgian Ministry of Finance, where she was responsible for analysing data from large entreprises. She also collaborated with other European tax authorities to develop guidelines for the application of AI in fiscal matters. During her tenure in the public sector, Laure obtained a certification in biostatistics. At the EORTC, she will contribute to research projects on various topics, including gastric cancer treatments and the resectability of stage III non-small-cell lung cancer.

Tetsuya Sekita joined the EORTC as a Medical Fellow in October 2024. He is an orthopaedic surgeon specializing in sarcoma treatment. He earned his PhD from Keio University in Tokyo, Japan, and has experience in both clinical sarcoma care and basic research, having previously worked at the National Cancer Center in Japan. He also spent a year and a half at the Japan Clinical Oncology Group (JCOG) headquarters, where he trained in clinical research methodology and served as a study coordinator. During his fellowship at the EORTC, he will be actively involved in the daily operations of the EORTC Soft Tissue and Bone Sarcoma Group (STBSG) trials and will work to strengthen collaborative ties between EORTC and JCOG.

Lydia Champezou joined EORTC as a Fellow Biostatistician on August 2024. She is from Greece and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a Master’s degree in Biostatistics from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. After her studies, she worked at Frontier Science Foundation Hellas (FSF-H), where she was introduced in clinical trials. Her work was focused on researching joint models for longitudinal and time-to-event data, while she also participated in projects with ESMO, such as the Women for Oncology (W4O) project and the Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale (MCBS) research project. Recently, she completed a traineeship at the European Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention (ECDC), where she worked on impact analysis of COVID-19 and on STI modelling to investigate the increases in EU/EEA. In addition, she was a member of the research and development team of the European Respiratory Diseases Forecasting Hub (RespiCast). At EORTC, she will work on Melanoma projects, starting with a translational analysis that focuses on auto-antibodies and the outcome of patients treated with adjuvant pembrolizumab and placebo in the 1325 trial.

Fanny Hoogstoel joined the EORTC statistics department as a fellow in August 2024. She holds a master’s degree in Statistics Modeling and Data Science in Public Health (Medicine Sorbonne University, Paris, France) and Bioinformatics Biostatistics (Paris Saclay University, France) as well as a bachelor’s degree in mathematics (University of Nantes, France). Before joining EORTC, she worked as a teaching assistant at UC Louvain (Belgium) where she had the opportunity to give statistics courses for bachelor’s and master’s students, was a consultant for the Statistical Methodology and Computing Service, and was involved in research in biostatistics, especially on survival analysis. At the EORTC, she will work on multiple projects, beginning with one on rare sarcomas.

Fábio Cardoso Borges joined the EORTC in January 2024 as a Research Fellow at the Executive Office. He is Portuguese and holds a master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Lisbon (FFULisboa). He has previously worked as a researcher in (pharmaco)epidemiology and outcomes research at the Portuguese Cancer Registry (RON at IPO Lisboa) and as a Project Manager at the EORTC. Concurrently, he has been working as a health technology assessment (HTA) assessor for the Portuguese HTA agency (INFARMED I.P.). Considering his particular interest on the methodological aspects of clinical studies and in regulatory and HTA decision-making, Fábio will focus on optimising the clinical research landscape for anticancer treatments during his fellowship at the EORTC. His project aims to identify evidence gaps, assess the value of pragmatic clinical trials in bridging the efficacy-effectiveness gap, and propose how the established clinical research paradigm can be adapted to incorporate pragmatic clinical trials as a tool to bridge the evidence gaps experienced in oncology by decision-makers.

Bryan Leurquin has Belgian and Australian citizenship. He has a bachelor degree in physics as well a as master’s degree in statistics from Université Catholique de Louvain. He joined the EORTC statistics department as a fellow in February 2023. Prior to joining EORTC, he worked as an IT Consultant in Luxembourg where he had the opportunity to work for the Laboratoire National de Santé as a Data Engineer in the anatomical pathology department. In his free time, he likes to paint miniatures and play them on tabletop with friends and goes to the gym every day to exercise. He currently works on meta-analysis research projects for the GI and Brain Tumour Groups.

Anne Esser joined the EORTC Quality of Life Department as a Research Fellow in February 2024. She holds a master’s degree in cultural anthropology and development studies (KU Leuven, Belgium) and migration studies (Pompeu Fabra University, Spain) as well as a bachelor’s degree in psychology (FU Hagen, Germany). Anne has worked in quantitative and qualitative international social research in and for the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, mostly on multi-country surveys, related to social issues. Most recently, she worked at Civil Society Europe and Ipsos. At the EORTC, her focus will be on updating the guidelines for assessing quality of life in EORTC clinical trials based on a literature review and interviews. Anne will also be involved in other activities related to the standardisation of measuring patient-reported outcomes and quality-of-life endpoints.

Ryosuke Kita joined the EORTC as a Medical Fellow in October 2023. He received his Medical Degree from Kyushu University in Japan. After finishing training in general surgery, he worked as an upper gastrointestinal surgeon, particularly focusing on the treatment of oesophageal cancer and gastric cancer. He spent a year and a half at the headquarters of Japan Clinical Oncology Group (JCOG) learning clinical research methodology and working as a study coordinator. During his stay at the EORTC, he will be involved in a collaborative project between EORTC and JCOG in the field of gastrointestinal cancers.

Volha Hertsyk is a Belarusian professional who holds an advanced master’s degree in medical physics earned through the collaborative program of IAEA, ICTP and University of Trieste in Italy. Her career began as a technician in the radiotherapy department at the National Cancer Centre of Belarus, where she later advanced to the role of engineer. Her responsibilities included linac’s simple troubleshooting, treatment planning and quality assurance program creation. Furthermore, she gained two years of clinical experience in two different Italian hospitals with such duties as routine linac QA, treatment planning, and reviewing quality assurance documentation. She joined EORTC in September 2023 to become a part of the RTQA family and collaborate on the constantly evolving process for radiotherapy quality improvement.

Maria Chiara Lo Greco joined the EORTC in September 2023 as a Radiotherapy Quality Assurance Fellow. She is Italian and holds a master’s degree in medicine and surgery that she obtained at the University of Catania in 2020. In 2021, she started her Radiation Oncology residency at the University Hospital “G. Martino” of Messina, where she had the chance to deepen her knowledge of clinical oncology, multidisciplinary approaches, and advanced radiotherapy techniques. During her studies, she showed a keen interest in pediatric oncology and clinical research hence, she decided to apply for the research fellowship offered by the QUARTET project. During her stay at the EORTC, she will be involved in some QUARTET-affiliated trials and research projects, mostly related to pediatric soft tissue sarcoma and brain tumours.

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.

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

Dr. Daniel Portik joined the EORTC in May 2022 as an Emmanuel van der Schueren Radiotherapy Quality Assurance Fellow. Daniel received his medical degree at George Emil Palade University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science, and Technology of Târgu Mureş (UMPhST), Romania. He has participated in several exchange programs in countries like Hungary, Indonesia and Sweden. He finished his radiation oncology training at the ‘Prof.Dr.Ion Chiricuta’ Oncology Institute, Cluj-Napoca, Romania in 2019. During his stay at EORTC Daniel will analyse the radiotherapy quality assurance for H&N trials such as EORTC 1420 ‘Best of’ and the EORTC-1219 DAHANCA trials. With a strong interest in the oligometastatic disease, he will participate in the RTQA of the ongoing EORTC 1702 HALT trial. Likewise, he will also assist in the development and testing of knowledge-based planning models within EORTC. Daniel’s fellowship is supported by the Kom op Tegen Kanker foundation.