Biography
Amy has worked at the CEU since 2017, as a member of the team led by Dr Stephen Burgess. Her work focuses on Mendelian Randomisation (MR) methods and applications. She works on method development and on applying existing methods in different disease areas, particularly cardiovascular diseases. Beyond research, she is heavily involved with the department's public engagement and greatly enjoys meeting members of the public to discuss the implications of the CEU's research. She is also a member of Emmanuel college, where she sometimes teaches maths and statistics courses. Prior to this Amy completed her PhD in Random Matrix Theory at the University of Bristol. She retrained in statistics via a Graduate Diploma in Statistics from the Royal Statistical Society, and worked as a statistician at the Modernising Medical Microbiology group at the University of Oxford. Her research included using large linked NHS datasets to investigate weekend mortality in Oxfordshire, comparing programs for analysing antibiotic resistance in S. aureus bacteria, and modelling nasal presence of variants of S. aureus.
Research
Amy's development work looks at extending existing methods such as where the underlying causal relationships are non-linear or investigating best practise when methods are being applied across heterogeneous subpopulations of different sizes. Her applied analysis work is focused on curating suitable outcome datasets using a combination of reporting sources in UK Biobank and generating genetic association data for those outcomes for other members of her team, and interpretation of the causal estimate results coming from practical MR analyses.
Publications
Bassett, E, Broadbent, J, Gill, D, Burgess, S, Mason, AM. Inconsistency in UK Biobank event definitions from different data sources and its impact on representativeness: a case study of venous thromboembolism. 7 May 2024 In: American Journal of Epidemiology. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwad232
Patel, A, Ye, T, Xue, H, Lin, Z, Xu, S, Woolf, B, Mason, AM. and Burgess, S. MendelianRandomization v0.9.0: updates to an R package for performing Mendelian randomization analyses using summarized data. October 30, 2023. In: Wellcome Open Research. doi: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.19995.1
Mason, AM, Obi, I, Ayodele, O, Lambert, SA, Fahle, S. What makes a good life: using theatrical performance to enhance communication about polygenic risk scores research in patient and public involvement. 10 February 2023. In: Journal of Community Genetics doi: 10.1007/s12687-023-00635-1
Mason, AM, Burgess, S. Software Application Profile: SUMnlmr, an R package that facilitates flexible and reproducible non-linear Mendelian randomization analyses. 21 June 2022. In: International Journal of Epidemiology doi: 10.1093/ije/dyac150
Larsson, SC, Bäck, M, Rees, JMB, Mason, AM, Burgess, S. Body mass index and body composition in relation to 14 cardiovascular conditions in UK Biobank: a Mendelian randomization study. 7 January 2020. In: European heart journal doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehz388
Burgess, S, Ference, BA, Staley, JR, Freitag, DF, Mason, AM, Nielsen, SF, Willeit, P, Young, R, Surendran, P, Karthikeyan, S, Bolton, TR, Peters, JE, Kamstrup, PR, Tybjærg-Hansen, A, Benn, M, Langsted, A, Schnohr, P, Vedel-Krogh, S, Kobylecki, CJ, Ford, I, Packard, C, Trompet, S, Jukema, JW, Sattar, N, Angelantonio, ED, Saleheen,D, Howson, JMM, Nordestgaard, BG, Butterworth, AS, Danesh, J. Association of LPA variants with risk of coronary disease and the implications for lipoprotein (a)-lowering therapies: a Mendelian randomization analysis. 1 July 2018. In: JAMA cardiology doi: 10.1001/jamacardio.2018.1470
Walker, AS*, Mason, AM *, Quan, TP, Fawcett, NJ, Watkinson, P, Llewelyn, M, Stoesser, N, Finney, F, Davies, J, Wyllie, DH, Crook, DW, Peto, TEA. [* indicates joint first author] Mortality risks associated with emergency admissions during weekends and public holidays: an analysis of electronic health records. 1 July 2017. In: The Lancet Doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(17)30782-1
For more publications see https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8019-0777 or https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=EaxwpCMAAAAJ
Teaching and Supervisions
Amy has supported several master students and interns during her time at the CEU. Clare Hole (additional MPhil Thesis Advisor, 2024) on Disentangling Causality between OSA and adiposity with CVDs using Mendelian Randomization. Clara Zettelmeyer (additional MPhil Thesis Advisor, 2021) on Validation of a Chronic Kidney Disease Risk Prediction Model using the UK Biobank Cohort . Jim Broadbent (Summer internship, 2020) contributed to two publications during his internship, one on definitions of VTEs and one on an update to the MendelianRandomization package. Ifeanyi Chukwu (HDRUK Black Internship Program, 2021) worked on the health impacts of eating fish using the UK Biobank data. He wrote about his experiences as a summer intern at the CEU here: https://www.hdruk.ac.uk/news/my-health-data-research-uk-hdr-uk-black-internship-programme-experience-ifeanyi-chukwu/
Other Professional Activities
Amy regularly gives talks on statistical topics and runs creative activities about CEU research for public events and school groups. She ran Pathogen, a collaborative game about viral epidemics, for the Cambridge Festival in 2018 and 2020, and Genetic Risk Arts and Crafts in 2023 and 2024. If you would like her to give a talk or organise an activity for your school or group, either in person or online, please contact her by email. She is also a member of the university's Disability Support Network and a member of the PHPC’s EDI group. If you are a disabled member of the department who needs support in requesting reasonable accommodations or navigating UK disability support, please get in touch by email.
