Join us on September 2nd to kick off our Fall 2026 CTML Seminar Series! Anna Menacher, Lead Scientist at Novo Nordisk, will start our series with her talk "Causal Inference in Pharma: Open Problems and Opportunities." This talk will take place at 12:00PM at Berkeley Way West, 5th Floor, Room 5401.
Abstract: Causal inference plays an increasingly important role across pharmaceutical research, but many practically important questions remain methodologically challenging. In this talk, I will share a collection of themes and open problems that we are currently thinking about in the pharmaceutical setting. Rather than presenting a single piece of work, the aim is to give a flavour of the kinds of causal inference questions that arise in practice, highlight areas where further methodological development could be valuable, and spark discussion. I especially hope to connect with people whose research is adjacent to these problems—or who simply find them interesting—and encourage conversations and potential collaborations.
Bio: Anna Menacher is a Lead Scientist at Novo Nordisk, where she works on university collaborations aimed at advancing methodological research in causal inference for the pharmaceutical industry. She received her PhD from the University of Oxford, where her research focused on Bayesian statistics and applications in neuroimaging. Her current methodological interests include longitudinal targeted maximum likelihood estimation (LTMLE), longitudinal realistic policy interventions, and target trial emulation.