Christina Pagel facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Christina Pagel
Pagel in 2016
Born	London, England
Citizenship	United Kingdom, Germany
Education	St Paul's Girls' School
Alma mater	The Queen's College, Oxford King's College London Birkbeck College, University of London Imperial College London
Occupation	Professor of operational research
Scientific career
Institutions	University College London
Thesis	Analysis of turbulent intermittency in the heliospheric magnetic field using Ulysses data (2002)

Christina Pagel (/ˈpɑːɡəl/ PAH-gəl) is a German-British mathematician. She is a professor of operational research at University College London (UCL). She works in a special unit called CORU. Here, she uses math and data to help improve healthcare. She used to lead CORU and is now a Vice President of the UK Operational Research Society. She also helps lead a group called CHIMERA. They study data from very sick hospital patients.

Christina Pagel's Early Life and Education

Christina Pagel loved math from a young age. She studied mathematics at The Queen's College, Oxford and graduated in 1996. She also earned other degrees, including one in Mathematical Physics. In 2002, she received her PhD in Space Physics. Her PhD research looked at how the sun's magnetic field behaves in space.

How Christina Pagel Uses Math to Help People

Christina Pagel uses her math skills to solve real-world problems. This is called operational research. She focuses on making healthcare better and safer for everyone.

Improving Hospital Care with Data

In 2005, Pagel started working at UCL's Clinical Operational Research Unit (CORU). Her job was to use math to solve problems in healthcare. She helps hospitals make better choices. She looks at how patients recover after heart surgery. This includes both children and adults in the UK. She also studies how children stay in intensive care. Her work helps hospitals run more smoothly.

Helping Critically Ill Patients

Since 2020, Pagel has co-led the CHIMERA centre at UCL. This team uses math, engineering, and AI to help very sick patients. They look at anonymous data from patients in intensive care. This includes patients at University College Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital. By using tools like machine learning, they learn more about how patients get sick and recover. This helps doctors give better care.

Making Heart Surgery Safer for Children

Pagel played a key role in creating a special math model. This model helps understand the survival rates for children with heart problems. It's called the Partial Risk Adjustment in Surgery (PRAiS) model. Since 2013, this model has been used to share hospital survival rates. Pagel also developed software for this model. All UK hospitals that perform children's heart surgery use it.

She also led a project to build a website about children's heart surgery survival. This website was launched in 2016. It helps families understand the information better.

Sharing Science with Everyone

Christina Pagel loves to share her passion for math and science. She works with schools and universities. She wants more young people to get excited about these subjects.

Her work on the children's heart surgery website is a great example. It showed other researchers how to involve the public in their work. She also helped create a guide called "Making Sense of Statistics."

In 2023, she was the President of the Mathematics Section for the British Science Festival. This shows her leadership in the field.

Christina Pagel and Public Policy

Pagel uses her research skills to understand public opinion. She looks at data from public polls. This helps her understand what people think about topics like health policy. She often talks about these topics on podcasts.

Helping During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In May 2020, Pagel joined the Independent SAGE committee. This group gives independent advice to the UK Government. They helped during the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of this work, she often shared her insights in newspapers. She also appeared on TV news channels in the UK and other countries. She helped people understand the UK's response to the pandemic.

Awards and Special Recognition

Christina Pagel has received many awards for her important work.

• In 2019, she won the Lyn Thomas Impact Medal. This award was for her work on children's heart disease. It recognized how her work made a big difference for children and their families.
• In 2021, she received special awards from The BMJ and HealthWatch UK. These were for her amazing work in sharing science with the public during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• She was also named a "Companion of OR" by the UK Operational Research Society in 2021.
• From 2022 to 2024, she is the Vice President of the UK Operational Research Society. She also gave the important Blackett Lecture in 2022.
• In 2023, she won an award for her excellent writing about statistics. This was for an article about why girls might avoid physics.
• In 2024, she became an Honorary Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health. This is a very high honor.