Professor of the Epidemiology of Ageing
Email: np275@cam.ac.uk
Background
Professor Pashayan studied biology and medicine at the American University of Beirut (AUB), epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, public health at the University of Cambridge, and medical education at the University of Dundee. She gained her PhD in cancer screening from the University of Cambridge. She trained as family physician at AUB-Medical Centre before training in public health medicine in East of England.
She is an honorary consultant in public health medicine at the Cambridge University NHS Foundation Trust. Before joining the Department of Public Health and Primary Care in 2023, she was Professor of Applied Cancer Research and Head of the Research Department of Applied Health Research at UCL.
Professor Pashayan is a British Psychological Society Level A and Level B assessor. She has received the RCGP Young Investigator’s Bill Styles Memorial award, the AACR Pezcoller Foundation Scholar-in-Training award, and the Cancer Research UK Training Fellowship in Epidemiology and Public Health and Clinician Scientist Fellowship.
Research
Professor Pashayan’s research field is in risk stratification and cancer screening, leading among the first publications in the field of risk-stratified cancer screening. Her research focusses on three areas:
- Understanding the natural history of cancer to inform early detection strategies.
- Evaluating benefit-harm balance and cost-effectiveness of early detection interventions to inform policy.
- Exploring the barriers and enablers and co-designing strategies for implementation of evidence-based early detection interventions tailored to the specific context.
Specific ongoing projects include:
- CRUK ACED funded project on computational modelling of tumour growth kinetics to inform early cancer detection, in collaboration with Stanford University.
- NIH funded CISNET-prostate on modelling precision interventions for prostate cancer control in collaboration with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Centre, University of Michigan, Erasmus MC, and UCL.
- CIHR and Genome Canada funded implementation studies as part of PERSPECTIVE I&I project (Personalised Risk Assessment for Prevention and Early Detection of Breast Cancer: Integration and Implementation) in Quebec and Ontario provinces, in collaboration with Université Laval and the University of Toronto.
- Prostate Cancer UK and NIHR funded TRANSFORM trial (Trial of Randomised Approaches for National Screening for Men), a prostate cancer screening randomised trial.
- NIHR funded Policy Research Unit in Cancer Awareness, Screening, and Early Diagnosis.
- CRUK ACED funded ABIDE Feasibility Study (Addressing the Base Error Impeding the Development of Biomarkers for Early Detection).
- Developing stochastic model, MSM-CanProg (UK), of natural history of cancer and microsimulation to evaluate screening strategies.
Teaching
Professor Pashayan is the Director of Training for the International Alliance for Cancer Early Detection (ACED), academic theme lead for epidemiology of the MPhil in Population Health Sciences, and a GMC recognised educational supervisor.
Publications
For a full list of Publications, please go to: Professor Nora Pashayan - Google Scholar