Rebecca A Betensky

Chair of the Department of Biostatistics

Professor of Biostatistics

Professional overview

Prior to NYU, Dr. Betensky was Professor of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She was director of the Harvard Catalyst (Clinical and Translational Science Award) Biostatistics Program; director of the Data and Statistics Core for the Massachusetts Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center; and director of the Biostatistics Neurology Core at Massachusetts General Hospital. Previously, she was the Biostatistics Program Leader for the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.

Dr. Betensky’s research focuses on methods for the analysis of censored and truncated outcomes and covariates, which frequently arise from the subsampling of cohort studies. She has a long-time interest in clinical trials, and has written on the evaluation of biomarkers and the use and interpretation of p-values. She has collaborated extensively in studies in neurologic diseases, and serves as statistical editor for Annals of Neurology.

Dr. Betensky was awarded, and directed for 15 years, an NIH T32 training program in neurostatistics and neuroepidemiology for pre- and post-doctoral students in biostatistics and epidemiology and for clinician-scientists. She previously directed Harvard’s Biostatistics programs to promote and support diversity at all levels in the field of quantitative public health. She was also a member of the BMRD Study Section for review of NIH statistical methodology grants; on committees for the Institute of Medicine; and a co-chair of the technical advisory committee for the scientific registry of transplant recipients.

Dr. Betensky an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the International Statistical Institute, and is a past recipient of the Spiegelman Award from the American Public Health Association. She currently serves as a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors for Clinical Science and Epidemiology at the National Cancer Institute.

Education

AB, Mathematics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

PhD, Statistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

Areas of research and study

Biology

Biostatistics

Neuroepidemiology

Neurology

Neurostatistics

Translational science

Publications

Publications

Platelet Function Is Associated With Dementia Risk in the Framingham Heart Study

Sex and Race Differences in the Evaluation and Treatment of Young Adults Presenting to the Emergency Department With Chest Pain

Transformation model based regression with dependently truncated and independently censored data

Association of APOE Genotype With Heterogeneity of Cognitive Decline Rate in Alzheimer Disease

Comment on “Patient preference for cellulitis treatment: At-home care is preferred to hospital-based treatment”

Concordance measures and time-dependent ROC methods

COVID-19 in Individuals Treated With Long-Term Hydroxychloroquine: A Propensity Score-Matched Analysis of Cicatricial Alopecia Patients

Defining the Lowest Threshold for Amyloid-PET to Predict Future Cognitive Decline and Amyloid Accumulation

Displaying survival of patient groups defined by covariate paths: Extensions of the Kaplan-Meier estimator

Estimation of the censoring distribution in clinical trials

Limitations of the Unified Multiple System Atrophy Rating Scale as outcome measure for clinical trials and a roadmap for improvement

Mucocutaneous Manifestations of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Reply to Tendler et al

Seizure risk with repetitive TMS: Survey results from over a half-million treatment sessions

The Neutrophil to Lymphocyte Ratio Is Associated With the Risk of Subsequent Dementia in the Framingham Heart Study

A pilot protocol to assess the feasibility of a virtual multiple crossover, randomized controlled trial design using methylphenidate in mild cognitive impairment

Accounting for incomplete testing in the estimation of epidemic parameters

Association of anxiety with subcortical amyloidosis in cognitively normal older adults

Characteristics of Paid Malpractice Claims among Resident Physicians from 2001 to 2015 in the United States

Exchanging Dermatoscopes for Stethoscopes: Has the COVID-19 Pandemic Highlighted Gaps in US Dermatology Residency Training?

Intravenous alteplase for stroke with unknown time of onset guided by advanced imaging: systematic review and meta-analysis of individual patient data

Inverse probability weighting methods for Cox regression with right-truncated data

Prediagnostic adult body mass index change and esophageal adenocarcinoma survival

Association of Amyloid and Tau with Cognition in Preclinical Alzheimer Disease: A Longitudinal Study

Design and analysis considerations for combining data from multiple biomarker studies