Professor Mike Clarke has 30 years’ experience of rigorous evaluations in health and social care, including numerous prospective studies and systematic reviews. In a career that started at the Clinical Trial Service Unit in Oxford, he was Director of the UK Cochrane Centre from 2002 to 2011, before his current post as Director of the Northern Ireland Methodology Hub in Queen’s University Belfast. He is also Director of the Northern Ireland Clinical Trials Unit and Co-ordinating Editor of the Cochrane Methodology Review Group. He is a founder of Evidence Aid, improving access to evidence for disasters and other humanitarian emergencies.

Mike has been actively involved in dozens of randomised trials, including several with more than 1000 participants. He has provided detailed advice for hundreds of other trials; used the individual participant data (IPD) from more than a thousand in meta-analyses, and assessed reports for tens of thousands more as part of initiatives to improve access to research.

Mike’s work on systematic reviews includes the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group IPD reviews of randomised trials in breast cancer. These have provided definitive evidence on the effects of treatments since the 1980s, influencing the care of many millions of women worldwide.

Mike teaches widely about research, and established and continues to teach the randomised trials and systematic reviews modules on the University of Oxford’s MSc in Evidence Based Health Care.