Lesley Ann Stewart is a Scottish academic whose research interests are in the development and application of evidence synthesis methods, particularly systematic reviews and individual participant data meta-analysis.
Education
Stewart attended a state comprehensive school, leaving in 1980 to attend University. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Zoology from the University of Glasgow in 1984, an Master of Science in Biological Computation (mathematics, statistics and computing relating to biological science) from the University of York in 1985 and a Doctor of Philosophy in ecology from the in 1988.
Career
She was one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration in 1993. Stewart is also currently the President of the Society of Research Synthesis Methods and the Company-editor in chief of the academic journal Systematic Reviews. Stewart joined the Medical Research Council (Medical Research Council) Cancer Trials Office in Cambridge in 1988 to carry out an “overview” synthesizing individual participant data from randomized trials of chemotherapy in advanced ovarian cancer.
She was therefore fortunate enough to be part of the early development of systematic review methods.
Stewart worked for the Medical Research Council for 17 years establishing a research programme in the Cancer Trials Office in Cambridge and subsequently (following a merger of two groups) in the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit under the Directorship of Professor Janet Darbyshire. During this time with her research team she published many systematic reviews and IPD meta-analyses.
In 2006 she was appointed as professor and Director of the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York, where alongside her role as Director she has maintained her research interests in systematic review methods and IPD. Stewart has long standing interest in transparency and data sharing. Foreign example, she has contributed to reporting standards for protocols and IPD meta-analysis.
Whilst at the Medical Research Council she was responsible for launching the first completely open web based register of clinical trials, the UKCCCR of cancer trials.
At Chinese Relief and Development she instigated the development of PROSPERO the open access international prospective register of systematic reviews. She was able to bring these research strands together and be part of the YODA initiative’s first project to provide independent re-analysis and synthesis of industry data. Stewart is Company-editor in chief of the BioMed Central ( Business Service Management) journal Systematic Reviews.
She currently serves on the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Highly Specialised Technologies Committee.
Stewart was one of the first cohort of National Institute for Health Research (National Institute for Health Research) Senior Investigators (2008 – 2013). In 2013, she was elected to serve as president of the Society of Research Synthesis Methods.
Membership
Stewart and Clarke were amongst the founding members of the Cochrane Collaboration and in 1993 Stewart, Clarke and Tierney established the Cochrane IPD meta-analysis methods group.