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

Tau positron emission tomographic imaging in aging and early Alzheimer disease

Thal amyloid stages do not significantly impact the correlation between neuropathological change and cognition in the Alzheimer disease continuum

Thioesterase superfamily member 1 suppresses cold thermogenesis by limiting the oxidation of lipid droplet-derived fatty acids in brown adipose tissue

A Pairwise Naïve Bayes Approach to Bayesian Classification

Accuracy of digital versus conventional implant impressions

APOEε2 is associated with milder clinical and pathological Alzheimer disease

Clinical pertinence metric enables hypothesis-independent genome-phenome analysis for neurologic diagnosis

Computationally simple analysis of matched, outcome-based studies of ordinal disease states

Matrix metalloproteinase 9-mediated intracerebral hemorrhage induced by cerebral amyloid angiopathy

Measures of follow-up in time-to-event studies: Why provide them and what should they be?

Phase 2 study of bosutinib, a Src inhibitor, in adults with recurrent glioblastoma

Power and sample size calculations for the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test in the presence of death-censored observations

Recognizing the problem of delayed entry in time-to-event studies: Better late than never for clinical neuroscientists

Reductions in red blood cell 2,3-diphosphoglycerate concentration during continuous renal replacment therapy

Research participant compensation: A matter of statistical inference as well as ethics

The influence of vascular risk factors and stroke on cognition in late life analysis of the NACC cohort

Vandetanib plus sirolimus in adults with recurrent glioblastoma: results of a phase I and dose expansion cohort study

Amyloid and APOE ε4 interact to influence short-term decline in preclinical Alzheimer disease

Anatomic pattern of intracerebral hemorrhage expansion: Relation to CT angiography spot sign and hematoma center

Anti-ApoE antibody given after plaque onset decreases Aβ accumulation and improves brain function in a mouse model of Aβ amyloidosis

Assumptions regarding right censoring in the presence of left truncation

Behavioral deficits, early gliosis, dysmyelination and synaptic dysfunction in a mouse model of mucolipidosis IV

Blood kidney injury molecule-1 is a biomarker of acute and chronic kidney injury and predicts progression to ESRD in type I diabetes

Computationally simple estimation and improved efficiency for special cases of double truncation

Eliminating bias due to censoring in Kendall's tau estimators for quasi-independence of truncation and failure