Pollyanna Hardy

Pollyanna Hardy is responsible for the management and strategic direction of the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU), the Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU), and overseeing a programme of neonatal and maternal clinical trials.

Polly joined the NPEU and CTU as a Senior Statistician in 2010. In 2017 she then took up a post as a Statistics Lead at the Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit, University of Birmingham, where she spent four years working on a diverse portfolio of Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT), including perinatology, global surgery, mental health and health services delivery. She then returned to the NPEU in 2021 as Director of the CTU.

Polly has extensive experience in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of RCTs, with a keen interest in complex RCT design methodology, and has particular expertise in RCTs in the field of obstetrics and neonatology. She is the statistics lead for the National Institute for Health Research Global Health Research Unit on Global Surgery RCT portfolio, and a member of a national Steering Group to develop a set of principles for handling end of follow-up events in clinical trials research (PeRSEVERE). She also currently sits on the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Commissioning Board.

Polly graduated from the University of Sussex in 1990 with a BSc in Mathematics and European Studies, and obtained an MSc in Statistics from University of Sheffield in 1994. She has previously worked as a medical statistician at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.