Dr. Manisha Desai

Stanford University

Dr. Manisha Desai is Professor of Medicine and of Biomedical Data Science, Section Chief of Biostatistics for the Department of Medicine, and Associate Dean of Research in the School of Medicine at Stanford University. She is the founding and current director of Quantitative Sciences Unit (QSU). The QSU is a data science unit created largely for the purpose of providing the statistical infrastructure for large-scale research projects. In her current role, Dr. Desai leads the Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design of the CTSA, the Biostatistics Shared Resource for the Cancer Center, and the analytic center of the western regional center for the Women’s Health Initiative. She takes the statistical lead on a number of medical studies that pose methodological challenges. Her statistical expertise is diverse and includes work on both observational and experimental studies in the areas of oncology, cardiovascular medicine, infectious disease epidemiology, and nephrology. The areas of her statistical expertise include the handling of missing data, the modeling of longitudinal data, the design of clinical studies, and methods for analyzing epidemiologic studies.