Johanna Ramroth

Project: Survival, morbidity and mortality after cancer cure

Johanna Ramroth was an Oxford Cancer funded DPhil student from 2012-2016. She was based in the Nuffield Department of Population Health where she was supervised by Professor Sarah Darby. Since graduating Johanna has gone on to a position as a postdoctoral epidemiologist, remaining at the University. Her research uses cancer registration data to help predict outcomes after radiotherapy for lymphoma patients, among other projects. We asked Johanna a few questions about her time as a Centre student, find out more about her experiences below:

What outcomes have resulted from your DPhil?

I published a meta-analysis of randomised clinical trials of different radiotherapy doses used to treat lung cancer patients, to see whether an increase in dose affects survival. I am also planning to publish the second study I conducted, exploring whether observational data can be used to draw conclusions about radiotherapy dose in the treatment of lung and breast cancer patients.

What advice would you give to current students?

Write, write, write!  The more you keep a log of what you are doing as you go along, the easier it will be later on to write it all up.  It doesn’t need to be fancily written — even just notes to yourself are worth their weight in gold.  And: make an agenda for all supervisor meetings (if possible, also a synopsis of what was decided during your meetings).  These agendas help to remind you of what happened when and help to find notes from the past when you need them.

If you do any programming: litter these with notes, dates, references to emails and papers.

Any publications, achievements, or plans you’d like to highlight or comment on?