Professor Deborah Ashby is Co-Director of Imperial Clinical Trials Unit and holds the Chair in Medical Statistics and Clinical Trials at Imperial College London. Previously, she held the Chair in Medical Statistics at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London and academic appointments at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests are in clinical trials, risk-benefit decision making for medicines, and the utility of Bayesian approaches in these areas.

Deborah is a member of the UK Commission on Human Medicines, regularly advises the European Medicines Agency and is advisor to the National Institute for Health Research on capacity building in the areas of statistics, clinical trials and economics. She has served on the Council of the Royal Statistical Society and as both Senior Honorary Officer and Vice-President, and within the International Society of Bayesian Analysis she has held roles on the Board of Directors and as Executive Secretary.

Deborah has also served as statistical editor for the Cochrane Cystic Fibrosis and Genetics Disorders Group and the BMJ (British Medical Journal) and on editorial boards of several statistical journals. She is a Chartered Statistician, an Honorary Member of both the Faculty of Public Health Medicine and the Royal College of Radiologists and was awarded the OBE for services to medicine in the 2009 New Years Honours List.