Donna Spiegelman, newly named as the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Biostatistics, will focus her research at Yale on the development and dissemination of new methods for implementation and prevention sciences.
As director of the newly created Yale Center for Methods in Implementation and Prevention Science, Spiegelman will lead her colleagues in the development of quantitative and qualitative methods to advance the translation of scientific findings to large-scale public health impact. Particular interests of the center include the prevention of cervical and colorectal cancer, of cardiometabolic diseases, of HIV/AIDS, and of mental health problems.
Spiegelman, who most recently served as professor of epidemiologic methods at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and is now Professor Emerita there, assumed her apppointment at Yale on July 1.
Spiegelman is one of the few people in the world with a joint doctorate in biostatistics and epidemiology. In her research, she has focused on methods for study design and data analysis that reduce bias in estimation and inference due to measurement error or misclassification in the exposure variable. She is experienced in troubleshooting and solving methodological issues that arise in longitudinal investigations, in clinical trials, and in large scale public health effectiveness evaluations.
Spiegelman brought two investigator-initiated grants and a National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award with her from Harvard. She is the first biostatistician to ever receive the Pioneer Award, a $5 million grant given to “individual scientists of exceptional creativity, who propose pioneering, and possibly transforming, approaches to major challenges in biomedical and behavioral research.” She is a recent recipient of Harvard’s Committee on the Advancement of Women Faculty Mentoring Award.
A graduate of Brandeis University, Spiegelman earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in biostatistics and epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. She has held faculty positions at Tufts University School of Medicine, and is the author or co-author of more than 660 peer-reviewed articles in professional journals.