CIMPOD - Key Persons

Dr. Maya Petersen

Job Titles:
  • Associate Professor / Biostatistics & Epidemiology / University of California, Berkeley
  • Associate Professor of Biostatistics & Epidemiology at the School of Public Health
Dr. Maya Petersen is Associate Professor of Biostatistics & Epidemiology at the School of Public Health of the University of California, Berkley. Dr. Petersen's methodological research focuses on the development and application of novel causal inference methods to problems in health, with an emphasis on longitudinal data and adaptive treatment strategies (dynamic regimes), machine learning methods, and on study design and analytic strategies for cluster randomized trials. She is currently lead statistician for a large HIV prevention trial in East Africa (SEARCH), is co-PI of a sequential multiple assignment randomized trial to optimize retention in HIV care (ADAPT-R), and is a co-investigator on the International Epidemiologic Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) for Eastern and Southern Africa, large HIV clinical cohort data consortium. Her course "Introduction to Causal Inference", joint with Laura Balzer, was awarded the 2014 American Statistical Association's Causality in Statistical Education Prize (course materials available at www.ucbbiostat.com) She has a strong interest in and has published extensively at the interface between biostatistics, epidemiology, and clinical medicine, and is deeply committed to strengthening communication between stakeholders surrounding the complexity of causal inference methods.

Yi Zhang

Job Titles:
  • Principal Investigator
  • Senior Research Associate
  • Senior Research Associate at Medical Technology and Practice Patterns Institute
Dr. Zhang (Principal Investigator) is a Senior Research Associate at Medical Technology and Practice Patterns Institute (MTPPI). She has extensive experience in medical and biostatistical research, designing and conducting studies using electronic health records, especially in the field of chronic renal disease. Dr. Zhang is PI of several PCORI-funded methods projects that aim to evaluate and apply causal inference methods such as g-methods for addressing comparative effectiveness research (CER) questions using observational data. In addition, Dr. Zhang is the lead organizer of previous CIMPOD conference and workshops presented by the foremost experts in the field of causal inference methods.