Niki Petrakos (she/her) is a CTN+ postdoctoral fellow, working with Dr. Alexandra de Pokomandy at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC). Her postdoctoral research focuses on investigating the real-world implementation of cardiovascular (CVD) health interventions among people living with HIV by utilizing statistical causal inference methodology. Though recent clinical trial results are promising and have led to changes in CVD care recommendations worldwide for people living with HIV, Niki’s project aims to quantify the impact in Quebec as the available CVD measurement tools and treatments differ from those of the trial. She is eager to collaborate with clinicians, people with lived experience and knowledge users, as well as other biostatisticians throughout the project.

Previously, Niki received her B.Sc. in mathematics at McGill University and her M.S. in biostatistics at the University of Washington in Seattle. Following that, she returned to McGill to pursue her PhD in biostatistics under the supervision of Dr. Erica Moodie, where she developed frameworks for generating realistic synthetic trial data as well as simulation-based power analyses for clinical trials with time-varying treatments. During her studies, Niki also worked in a variety of research and industry settings, including as a research assistant at the largest trauma center in Washington State recruiting participants in Hepatitis C treatment studies, as a marketing analyst at Kaiser Permanente evaluating patient retention, and as a data analyst at the RI-MUHC serving as the primary biostatistician on a variety of HIV cohort studies spanning multiple provinces in Canada.