Designing smarter clinical trials
Dr. Kelsey L. Grantham is a Biostatistician and a Research Fellow at the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
As a postdoctoral Research Fellow, Kelsey leads research on efficient designs for cluster randomized trials, with a focus on staircase designs, and directs the statistical aspects of applied studies at Monash.
Kelsey has a background in mathematics and applied statistics. After a career as a mathematical modeler of disease epidemics, Kelsey commenced a Ph.D. at Monash focused on developing statistical methodology for cluster randomized trials. Her doctoral work developed novel, more realistic statistical methods and more efficient trial designs. This work has helped ensure cluster randomized trials draw valid and precise conclusions about the impact of new interventions. Kelsey's Ph.D. was awarded in 2021, and she received the Damien Jolley Award for an outstanding thesis.
Where my work concentrates
Cluster-randomized trial design
Novel, more realistic designs — including staircase and stepped-wedge variants — that improve efficiency without sacrificing rigour.
Applied statistical methodology
Methods that account for real-world structure such as decaying correlation and continuous recruitment in longitudinal trials.
Statistical practice in public health
Directing the statistical aspects of applied studies at Monash, translating methodology into sound, actionable evidence.
Recent publications
Jessica Kasza, Kelsey L. Grantham, Rhys Bowden, Brennan C Kahan, A. Forbes (2026) Repeated inclusion cluster randomized trials: a new class of designs for assessing group-level interventions. Biometrics 82(1).
Ehsan Rezaei‐Darzi, Kelsey L. Grantham, Andrew Forbes, Jessica Kasza (2025) Inference for the treatment effect in staircase designs with continuous outcomes: a simulation study. BMC Medical Research Methodology 25(1), 127–127.
Ehsan Rezaei‐Darzi, Jessica Kasza, Anisa Assifi, Danielle Mazza, Andrew Forbes, Kelsey L. Grantham (2025) Identifying Less Burdensome and More Cost‐Efficient Incomplete Stepped Wedge Designs for Continuous Outcomes Collected via Repeated Cross‐Sections. Statistics in Medicine 44(8-9), e70067–e70067.
Kelsey L. Grantham, Andrew Forbes, Richard Hooper, Jessica Kasza (2025) The relative efficiency of staircase and stepped wedge cluster randomised trial designs. Statistical Methods in Medical Research 34(4), 701–716.