He is not only an excellent biostatistician at CTM, but as a pharmacist, he is also a dedicated supervisor and one of the group leaders of the Miscellaneous Group. He provides valuable input into the projects, and always pays attention to constructive feedback. In January, Gergely Agócs was named Staff Member of the Month at the Centre for Translational Medicine.
Dr. Agócs graduated as a pharmacist, but he assists CTM mainly as a biostatistician. He became involved in scientific work after winning a biophysics competition at Semmelweis University as a first-year pharmacy student. “I started my academic career as a student researcher at the Institute of Biophysics and Radiation Biology at our university. Together with my supervisor, Dr. Szabolcs Osváth, we investigated the structural changes of protein molecules using spectroscopy. This research topic appealed to me so much that I started my Ph.D. studies in this institute right after graduation. Evaluating the results of our research required a lot of mathematical and biostatistical knowledge, so I trained myself in that area with the help of my supervisor. I’ve learnt that if there’s a scientific question, we have to keep going until we answer it. As a Ph.D. student, I got involved in teaching undergraduate students. First, I became an assistant lecturer, then an assistant professor, and I started to look for new research fields. I became interested in statistics and started teaching it in 2008. Since statistics was introduced as a separate subject in the curriculum just then, we had to develop the teaching material.”
At the same time, Dr. Agócs joined the Society of Clinical Biostatistics, which was based at the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Veterinary Medicine. “I started attending their courses, and the training was very inspiring. By this time, I had already received many requests from students at Semmelweis University, whom I helped to plan research and evaluate results. When CTM was launched at our university in 2021, I joined the Centre at the suggestion of Dr. Andrea Harnos, my long-time mentor in the science of statistics. In our first discussion, Prof. Dr. Péter Hegyi said he believed in learning by doing. He was right: although I had no experience with meta-analysis before, I could manage to learn into it, and I got into the work very quickly. At CTM, I help researchers from the very beginning. My work is greatly aided by my interest in natural sciences and my knowledge in pharmacy. This allows me to communicate smoothly with clinicians on health topics as a statistician.”
This academic year, Dr. Agócs started working as a group leader of the Miscellaneous Group alongside Dr. Emese Sipter. In this role, he supports the research of seven Ph.D. students and assists one of them as a supervisor. “I really like these assignments, and I feel that I can learn a lot from them. It’s great that everyone works for a common goal at CTM, and everybody contributes on projects to achieve results. This results in excellent articles being published in the world’s most distinguished scientific journals. In the future, I would like to supervise more Ph.D. students, and I would like to take part in establishing a Ph.D. program for statisticians at CTM. I have many research ideas that could be explored in the field of clinical statistics.”
(Szabó Emese)