Lara Wolfson, PhD, is the Associate VP and Head of HTA Statistics at MSD in Zurich, Switzerland. Leading a team of 75+ statisticians, she pioneers quantitative solutions for Health Technology Assessment (HTA) challenges. Lara's career spans roles at Merck, Janssen, and the World Health Organization, focusing on biostatistics, health technology assesment, vaccines, epidemiology, and health economics. She also taught at Brigham Young University (US) and the University of Waterloo (Canada). Dr. Wolfson co-leads the HTA ESIG (European Special Interest Group) of EFSPI (European Federation of Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry), and holds MS and PhD degrees in Statistics from Carnegie Mellon University, with an undergraduate background from Simon Fraser University.

I solve problems. Throughout more than 20 years as a statistician in the healthcare industry (public health, device and drug development, and medical affairs and access), my goals are to ask the right questions and develop optimal solutions to get patients the best care. I champion scientific curiosity, use of diverse data sources, effective measurement, and meticulous study design. As a leader and coach, I get people to exceed themselves by leaving their comfort zones, appreciating their strengths, building strategic collaborations, forming extensive personal networks, and aiming for impact locally and globally.
Currently I work in Product Development Data Sciences at Hoffmann La Roche, leading a team of programmers and statistical scientists with projects spanning the non-oncology portfolio from early stage through end of lifecycle. I also lead a community dedicated to creating and sharing best practices for collaboration and evidence generation supporting access and clinical practice. In addition, I work externally with industry professional societies and special interest groups to identify and execute opportunities to advance the field.
I received my M.S. and Ph.D. in the United States, where I split my energy between theoretical and applied statistics. In my free time I enjoy the exhilaration, natural beauty, and rich history while racing my sons up the mountains of Switzerland.

Alex Simpson, MSc, is an epidemiologist by training and has been working in the pharma real-world data space for 7 years. In his current role at Roche as an Access RWE Strategy Lead, he leads the development of RWD studies that are used to support reimbursement dossiers across the world which ultimately enable patients to access new therapies. Alex has a keen interest in how RWD can be used to support patient access with a particular focus in the rare disease space.

Christian Röver is a research associate at the Department of Medical Statistics, University Medical Center Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany. After studying Statistics at Dortmund University and Iowa State University, he earned a PhD degree at The University of Auckland. While his masters thesis was on classification methods, the PhD thesis was on computer intensive methods for Bayesian parameter estimation. After his PhD, he went on to work mostly on signal detection and parameter estimation problems at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Intitute) in Hannover, before moving to medical statistics at the University Medical Center Göttingen. His current methodological research focus is on Bayesian methods for meta-analysis, their application in the common case of only few studies, and their implementation in R.