Christina Pagel ( ) is a German-British mathematician and professor of

operational research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

(UCL) within UCL's Clinical Operational Research Unit (CORU), which applies operational research, data analysis and mathematical modelling to topics in healthcare. She was Director of UCL CORU from 2017 to 2022 and is currently Vice President of the UK

Operational Research Society The Operational Research Society (ORS), also known as The OR Society, is an international learned society in the field of operational research (OR), with more than 3,100 members (2021). It has its headquarters in Birmingham, England. History The ...

. She also co-leads, alongside Rebecca Shipley, UCL's CHIMERA research hub which analyses data from critically ill hospital patients.

Early life and education

Pagel graduated with a BA in Mathematics from

The Queen's College, Oxford The Queen's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford, England. The college was founded in 1341 by Robert de Eglesfield in honour of Philippa of Hainault. It is distinguished by its predominantly neoclassical architecture, ...

in 1996. She also holds an MSc in Mathematical Physics from King's College London, and MAs in Classical Civilisation, Medieval History and an MSc in Applied Statistics with Medical Applications from Birkbeck College, University of London. In 2002 Pagel was awarded a PhD in Space Physics on ''Turbulence in the

interplanetary magnetic field The interplanetary magnetic field (IMF), now more commonly referred to as the heliospheric magnetic field (HMF), is the component of the solar magnetic field that is dragged out from the solar corona by the solar wind flow to fill the Solar Sy ...

'' from

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

Research

Pagel's early career was spent in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, Massachusetts, studying the scattering of electrons in interplanetary space using data from the ACE spacecraft at Boston University with Professor Nancy Crooker. In 2005 she left physics, returning to London to take up a position with the UCL Clinical Operational Research Unit applying mathematics to problems in health care. In 2016, Pagel was awarded a

Harkness Fellowship The Harkness Fellowship (previously known as the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship) is a program run by the Commonwealth Fund of New York City. This fellowship was established to reciprocate the Rhodes Scholarships and enable Fellows from several cou ...

in Health Care Policy and Practice by the

Commonwealth Fund The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation (United States), private U.S. foundation whose stated purpose is to "promote a high-performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly fo ...

, through which Pagel spent 2016–2017 in the USA researching (a) the priorities of Republican and Democrat politicians for the goals of national health policy working with the Milbank Memorial Fund and (b) how clinical decision support systems can be better implemented within intensive care settings. During that year, she also completed a fellowship at the

Institute for Healthcare Improvement A Patient Safety Organization (PSO) is a group, institution, or association that improves medical care by reducing medical errors. Common functions of patient safety organizations are data collection and analysis, reporting, education, funding, ...

. Pagel was appointed as director of UCL's Clinical Operational Research Unit (CORU) in 2017. Her research uses approaches from mathematical modelling, operational research and data sciences to help people within the health service make better decisions. She focuses on mortality and morbidity outcomes following cardiac surgery in children and adults in the UK, leading and contributing to several large national projects; understanding the course of a child's stay in paediatric intensive care; mathematical methods to support service delivery within hospitals. In her role since 2020 at UCL's CHIMERA centre (Collaborative Healthcare Innovation through Mathematics, EngineeRing and AI), Pagel co-leads a multidisciplinary team which analyses anonymised data from intensive care patients at

University College Hospital University College Hospital (UCH) is a teaching hospital in the Fitzrovia area of the London Borough of Camden, England. The hospital, which was founded as the North London Hospital in 1834, is closely associated with University College Lond ...

and

Great Ormond Street Hospital Great Ormond Street Hospital (informally GOSH or Great Ormond Street, formerly the Hospital for Sick Children) is a children's hospital located in the Bloomsbury area of the London Borough of Camden, and a part of Great Ormond Street Hospit ...

. Using tools including

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

, the centre aims to improve understanding of the physiology of patients during illness and recovery, in order to improve their care. Pagel was instrumental in developing a statistical model to take into account the complexity of individual children with

congenital heart disease A congenital heart defect (CHD), also known as a congenital heart anomaly and congenital heart disease, is a defect in the structure of the heart or great vessels that is present at birth. A congenital heart defect is classed as a cardiovascular ...

, when considering a hospital's survival rate. This led to the Partial Risk Adjustment in Surgery (PRAiS) model, which has been used by the National Congenital Heart Disease Audit since 2013 to publish hospital survival rates, and the associated software, developed by Pagel, has been purchased by all UK hospitals performing children's heart surgery. She then led a multidisciplinary project working with the Children's Heart Federation, Sense about Science and Sir David Spiegelhalter to build a website on survival after children's heart surgery, launched in 2016.

Outreach and public engagement

Pagel is active in school and university

outreach Outreach is the activity of providing services to any population that might not otherwise have access to those services. A key component of outreach is that the group providing it is not stationary, but mobile; in other words, it involves meetin ...

, encouraging participation in mathematics and science subjects. Her work in developing the children's heart surgery website formed the basis of a national guide for researchers on how to involve the public and was separately featured in a

Health Foundation The Health Foundation is an independent charity for health care for people in the UK. The organisation’s aim is a healthier population, supported by high quality health care that can be equitably accessed. Its programs include making grants to ...

guide on engagement. She also contributed to the Sense about Science guide "Making Sense of Statistics".

Politics, policy and Covid-19

Pagel uses tools from her research to design and analyse political data from public polls, particularly in the context of

Brexit Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC ...

and health policy, and she is known as a regular podcast contributor on both themes. In May 2020, Pagel joined the Independent SAGE committee, whose aim is to offer independent advice to the UK Government during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. As part of her work for Independent SAGE, she is regularly quoted in several newspapers, writes for national newspapers and appeared on national and international broadcast media (e.g. ITV News, Sky News,

Channel 4 News ''Channel 4 News'' is the main news programme on British television broadcaster Channel 4. It is produced by ITN, and has been in operation since Channel 4's launch in November 1982. Current productions ''Channel 4 News'' ''Channel 4 News'' ...

, and

BBC Newsnight ''Newsnight'' (or ''BBC Newsnight'') is BBC Two's news and current affairs programme, providing in-depth investigation and analysis of the stories behind the day's headlines. The programme is broadcast on weekdays at 22:30. and is also availab ...

, India NDTV) and various podcasts discussing the UK's response to the pandemic.

Awards and recognition

In 2019, Pagel was awarded the Lyn Thomas Impact Medal from the

, along with her colleagues Sonya Crowe and Martin Utley. The award was made for their work related to

and recognised the "significant impact on the lives of children with congenital heart disease, as well on their families and the growing population of adults with the condition". In September 2021, Pagel was one of two recipients (alongside Devi Sridhar) of a special recognition award from ''

The BMJ ''The BMJ'' is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Origi ...

'', and in October 2021 she won a HealthWatch UK award, both for her work in public engagement in science during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was a Turing Fellow of the

Alan Turing Institute The Alan Turing Institute is the United Kingdom's national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, founded in 2015 and largely funded by the UK government. It is named after Alan Turing, the British mathematician and computing ...

by special appointment from 2021 to 2022. In November 2021, she was awarded the "Companion of OR" prize by the UK

. She was appointed as Vice President of the UK Operational Research Society for a two-year period from January 2022 to December 2024 and delivered the prestigious annual Blackett Lecture in December 2022.

References

External links

Interview for ''Chalkdust'' magazine
Ellen Jolley, October 2020 {{DEFAULTSORT:Pagel, Christina Year of birth missing (living people) German women mathematicians Living people People educated at St Paul's Girls' School Alumni of The Queen's College, Oxford Alumni of King's College London Alumni of Birkbeck, University of London Alumni of Imperial College London British women mathematicians 21st-century German mathematicians 21st-century British mathematicians Scientists from London German expatriates in the United States British expatriate academics in the United States 21st-century German women Harkness Fellows