She has been working at CTM as a statistician for over a year, she has shown great progress and works exceptionally well. She has also begun the applied biostatistics postgraduate vocational training in addition to her regular work. Boglárka Szentes was honored with the Excellent Staff Member Award by the Centre for Translational Medicine.
Boglárka Szentes graduated as an economist from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, then trained to become a public health specialist, and began working at a research institute as a researcher. At the same time, she pursued doctoral studies. In her dissertation, she compared health-related quality of life assessment tools for chronic lung diseases. This research was based on solid statistical evidence.
“Overall, I worked as a researcher for five years in Germany, then spent two years as a project manager at a clinical research organization. After living abroad for fourteen years, I returned home and began searching for a job that matched my skills and interests. Luckily, CTM caught my attention soon. It all started with a conversation I had with a friend who works as a clinician, and mentioned that they often find it difficult to understand and interpret research results. I have always been interested in this aspect of scientific work, and I have also been fascinated by how to ask questions properly when conducting research. That’s why I was happy that in Germany I was involved in formulating research questions and performing statistical analysis.” As Boglárka was very interested in this field of science, she not only applied to CTM as a statistician, but also began the applied biostatistics postgraduate vocational training at the University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest.
“I believe that every detail must be taken into account in research. For example, the questionnaires used in research, which are completed by patients, must be well-constructed. Just asking asthmatic patients how often they experience symptoms is not enough. They may have no problems five days a week, but on the remaining two days when they have asthma attacks, they struggle with severe symptoms and panic, and they are unable to go to work. For them, even a reduction of a few days per month in their asthma attacks would result in a huge improvement in their quality of life. This should be revealed by a well-designed questionnaire.” At CTM, Boglárka is primarily involved in research related to pediatrics, cardiology, orthopedics, and traumatology, but she also participates in research related to sports science, gynecology, and dentistry. But she doesn’t mind at all that her research topics are so diverse, because what she likes most about her job is that it is really varied.
(Emese Szabó)