In this episode Ellie Murray and Lucy D’Agostino McGowan chat with Ralph D’Agostino Sr. and Ralph D’Agostino Jr. about their careers in statistics, looking back at how things have developed and forward at where they see the world of statistics and epidemiology going. We’re excited to kick off the 100th year of the American Journal of Epidemiology with this episode.

Ralph D’Agostino Sr. is a professor of Mathematics/Statistics, Biostatistics, and Epidemiology at Boston University. He has been the lead biostatistician for the Framingham Heart Study, a biostatistical consultant to The New England Journal of Medicine, an editor of Statistics in Medicine and lead editor of their Tutorials, and a member and consultant on FDA committees. His major fields of research are clinical trials, prognostic models, longitudinal analysis, multivariate analysis, robustness, and outcomes/effectiveness research. 

Ralph D’Agostino Jr. is a professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Data Science at Wake Forest University where he is the Director of the Biostatistics Core of the Comprehensive Cancer Center. Methodologically his research includes developing statistical techniques for evaluating data from observational settings, handling missing data in applied problems, and developing predictive functions to identify prospectively patients at elevated risk for future negative outcomes. Some of his recent work includes the development of methods using propensity score models to identify safety signals in large retrospective databases. 

It also turns out they are Lucy’s father and grandfather, so we have 3 generations of statisticians on the pod!

We also have Amit Sasson on to discuss the winning cookie from the #EpiCookieChallenge as well as her work in causal inference!

Follow along on Twitter:

• The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi
• Ellie: @EpiEllie
• Lucy: @LucyStats

🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade.

👩‍🎨 Our artwork is by Allison Horst.