NMBU biostatistics advising service

The NMBU biostatistics advising service provide data analysis support in most fields of the life sciences, natural sciences and biosciences.

This includes help to plan studies, with data processing and analysis, as well as to interpret and present results.

The service is based in the Bioinformatics & Applied Statistics (BIAS) research group at the Faculty of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science. The BIAS group comprises researchers who teach everything from basic data processing and statistics courses to master’s degree and PhD level courses in their respective fields.

Basic support

This is a simple advising session that typically concerns support in a specific issue. It normally lasts up to one hour.

At this initial session, we work to clarify the issue and the data collection. We often discuss the research question and any negative and positive aspects of data collection. We can help with simple statistical methods, statistics software or support in writing applications. We can also provide advice on literature and courses that may be of relevance to learn more.

The advisory service is concluded after each meeting. The outcome of the session can either be to conclude the advicing, or to schedule more one-time similar sessions, or that the session develops into one of the other, more extensive advising services outlined below.

The basic advising will typically be adapted to master’s degree or PhD students. The session can take place in person or digitally, and sessions can be scheduled fairly quickly.

Single project support

This type of advising normally concerns bigger projects that take place over a longer period and that culminate in, for example, an article. We will be more involved in the proposed analyses and methods and provide coding and software support, but we will rarely conduct the actual analyses.

This service primarily targets PhD students, post-doctoral fellows and/or researchers. In the case of PhD students who need guidance, it is preferable that their main supervisor can attend the initial meeting, where we define and delimit the scope of the advising.

The division of responsibility between us, the student and main supervisor will also be defined at this meeting. It is not uncommon for the service’s contribution to entail co-authorship in any articles written, but this will be clarified in advance.

Project participation

This typically concerns large-scale research projects that run over many years. It may be a project where the user is seeking external funding and wants a statistician on the team, or as a co-supervisor for a PhD student.

It is natural in this kind of collaborative project that the advising service team conducts some/all of the statistical analyses and contributes to the planning phase and data collection, as well as the follow-up work.

We will also provide support in other less statistical issues that may arise during the process, and co-authorship in some of the articles generated from the project will be a natural consequence.

Teaching

We can provide courses on specific biostatistics topics as needed, for example to groups of master’s students, PhD students or research groups. These will typically be small-scale module-based courses in specific statistical topics.

Such topics could be: R programming, study planning, regression, ANOVA, general hypothesis testing etc.

This could also be relevant for existing courses at NMBU that collect or use statistical data analyses. In such case, we can typically contribute to one or more lectures, or devise a digital module that covers one or more analysis tool, data collection or study planning.

The advising service is available to all students and staff at NMBU.

We currently have user agreements with the Faculty of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science, the Faculty of Biosciences, the Faculty of Landscape and Society, the Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management and Faculty of Veterinary Medicine.

If you are affiliated with another faculty, we can draw up a separate financing agreement for your project.

All master's students can use the service through StatHjelp at the Writing Centre: See "statistics advice" on their site or book an appointment here.

To use NMBU’s biostatistics advising service, please contact us by filling in the contact form.

We will then get back to you regarding details for an appointment and pricing. 

The form is only used to prepare for the advising session as well as possible and to trace the contact information for different projects. We also wish to document our activities.

Fill in the form as thoroughly as possible. If you are unsure about any of the fields, you can skip them or write that you are not sure what to put there. The clearer the information you provide in the form, however, the easier it is for us to prepare for the first session. A clear issue and clear goal in terms of what you want and what kind of data you have collected or intend to collect, make a good starting point for the advising session.

We will contact you as soon as possible after you submit the form. For individual advising sessions, we will suggest a time for a one-hour meeting. If the proposed time is not convenient, you can send an email and we will agree on another time.

PhD students should preferably attend the first meeting with their main supervisor, and we will need to find a time that suits all three people involved.

We also want to point out that we commit to treating issues and data material confidentiality.

Click here for the online contact form

Contact persons: