Faiza Shahid
I am a PhD candidate in Medical Research (Pharmacoepidemiology) at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.
My research focuses on real-world drug safety, with particular emphasis on prescribing cascades, antidepressant use, and comparative medication effects in older adults using large electronic health record and claims databases. I apply pharmacoepidemiological methods, including propensity score techniques, survival analysis, and sequence symmetry analysis, to evaluate medication outcomes in routine clinical practice.
I am currently in the final stage of my PhD, awaiting oral defense, and undertaking a visiting research fellowship at the University of Oslo, Norway. During this fellowship, I am investigating antipsychotic use in pregnancy and associated maternal and neonatal outcomes using linked nationwide Norwegian registry data, including birth, prescription, hospital, and primary care records. The project aims to generate evidence on the safety of antipsychotic exposure during pregnancy to inform clinical decision-making.
Lizzy Simmons
I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I am training in the genetic epidemiology of heart, lung, and blood disorders. My research focuses on using large-scale administrative data to evaluate real‑world interventions and treatments relevant to pregnancy and maternal health. As a perinatal epidemiologist, I apply observational study designs and causal inference methods to address key questions in maternal and perinatal outcomes.
During my time on the International Alliance for PharmacoGenetic Epidemiology Excellence (iAPOGEE) Visiting Fellowship, I will be collaborating with members of the PharmaSafe group to assess genetic confounding of the association between prenatal opioid exposure and neurodevelopmental disorders in offspring.