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

Hazard regression for interval-censored data with penalized spline

Immunophenotypic and viral (human papillomavirus) correlates of vulvar seborrheic keratosis

Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor: The clinical spectrum and outcome of treatment

Neurolymphomatosis

The Leapfrog Volume Criteria May Fall Short in Identifying High-Quality Surgical Centers

A local likelihood proportional hazards model for interval censored data

C455R notch3 mutation in a Colombian CADASIL kindred with early onset of stroke

DMBT1 polymorphisms: Relationship to malignant glioma tumorigenesis

Histopathological-molecular genetic correlations in referral pathologist-diagnosed low-grade "oligodendroglioma"

Influence of unrecognized molecular heterogeneity on randomized clinical trials

Local likelihood analysis of the latency distribution with interval censored intermediate events

Sample size re-estimation in cluster randomization trials

Testing for dependence between failure time and visit compliance with interval-censored data

The use of frailty hazard models for unrecognized heterogeneity that interacts with treatment: Considerations of efficiency and power

A comparison of models for clustered binary outcomes: Analysis of a designed immunology experiment

A computationally simple test of homogeneity of odds ratios for twin data

Computationally simple accelerated failure time regression for interval censored data

Local likelihood analysis of survival data with censored intermediate events

Molecular subtypes of anaplastic oligodendroglioma: Implications for patient management at diagnosis

Multivariate logistic regression for familial aggregation of two disorders. I. Development of models and methods

Multivariate logistic regression for familial aggregation of two disorders. II. Analysis of studies of eating and mood disorders

Nonparametric estimation in a cure model with random cure times

Optimally selected chi square statistics for equivalence testing

PTEN is a target of chromosome 10q loss in anaplastic oligodendrogliomas and PTEN alterations are associated with poor prognosis

Tumor location and growth pattern correlate with genetic signature in oligodendroglial neoplasms