The team led by Joachim Schüz contributes with expertise in cancer epidemiology, in particular on environmental, occupational, radiation and lifestyle related causes from the Environment and Lifestyle Epidemiology Branch at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO). The team has been involved in epidemiological projects around the world, mainly within the Childhood Cancer and Leukemia International Consortium (CLIC) – a consortium pooling more 20 case-control studies from around the world – and the Global Acute Leukaemia network (GALnet) – a multi-disciplinary consortium of researchers and pediatric oncologies of 4-5 countries per continent. Most recent etiological research focused on pesticides and childhood cancer and parents’ occupations before conception and during pregnancy and cancer risk in their offspring.

Dr Schüz works on childhood cancer for more that 25 years with having worked at the University of Mainz for his Phd (1997) and HDR (2002) which is the German focal point for childhood cancer epidemiological research as hosting the national German childhood cancer registry. He continued with activities during his time at the Danish Cancer Society (2005-2010) and since arriving at IARC in 2010. Of his over 350 peer-reviewed publications about ⅓ deal with aspects of childhood cancer and he was invited to many conferences and meetings and expert groups to share his expertise on childhood cancer epidemiology. Another key team member is Dr Ann Olsson who is occupational epidemiologist in the Branch, has recently worked on childhood cancer and has vast experience in investigating chemicals also proposed to play a role in childhood cancer etiology. The team is further strengthened by Dr Evgenia Ostroumova who is radiation epidemiologist and pediatrician, by Dr Aurélie Danjou who is cancer epidemiologist with experience in pesticides research, and Mr Liacine Bouaoun, who is biostatistician in the Branch.

The contribution to the consortium is the epidemiological and statistical expertise applied in epidemiological projects and calculations of preventable and possibly preventable fractions of childhood cancer in France.