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

Primary CNS lymphoma in children and adolescents: A descriptive analysis from the International Primary CNS Lymphoma Collaborative Group (IPCG)

Reactive glia not only associates with plaques but also parallels tangles in Alzheimer's disease

Assessing Population Level Genetic Instability via Moving Average

Remote supervision of IV-tPA for acute ischemic stroke by telemedicine or telephone before transfer to a regional stroke center is feasible and safe

Spatial relation between microbleeds and amyloid deposits in amyloid angiopathy

A classic twin study of external ear malformations, including microtia

A latent class model with hidden markov dependence for array CGH data

Bone involvement predicts poor outcome in atypical meningioma: Clinical article

Genetic determinants of hearing loss associated with vestibular schwannomas

Genomic profiling distinguishes familial multiple and sporadic multiple meningiomas

Genomic profiling of atypical meningiomas associates gain of 1q with poor clinical outcome

High-dose methotrexate for elderly patients with primary CNS lymphoma

Matrix metalloproteinase inhibition reduces oxidative stress associated with cerebral amyloid angiopathy in vivo in transgenic mice

Microbleeds versus macrobleeds: Evidence for distinct entities

Polysomy for chromosomes 1 and 19 predicts earlier recurrence in anaplastic oligodendrogliomas with concurrent 1p/19q loss

A penalized latent class model for ordinal data

Analysis of familial aggregation studies with complex ascertainment schemes

Estimating time-to-event from longitudinal ordinal data using random-effects Markov models: Application to multiple sclerosis progression

Immunohistochemical analysis supports a role for INI1/SMARCB1 in hereditary forms of schwannomas, but not in solitary, sporadic schwannomas

Predicting clinical progression in multiple sclerosis with the magnetic resonance disease severity scale

Prognostic value of tumor microinvasion and metalloproteinases expression in intracranial pediatric ependymomas

Simultaneous confidence intervals based on the percentile bootstrap approach

Topotecan as salvage therapy for relapsed or refractory primary central nervous system lymphoma

Urinary biomarkers for sensitive and specific detection of acute kidney injury in humans

Urinary biomarkers in the early diagnosis of acute kidney injury