Laurel Alison Beckett (also published as Laurel A. Smith) is an American

biostatistician Biostatistics (also known as biometry) are the development and application of statistical methods to a wide range of topics in biology. It encompasses the design of biological experiments, the collection and analysis of data from those experimen ...

specializing in

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

and other age-related causes of cognitive impairment. Beyond biostatistics, she has also worked as an activist for women in medicine, including the advocacy of flexible career options allowing women to balance medical careers with childrearing. She is retired as distinguished professor emerita from the UC Davis School of Medicine, where she was chief of biostatistics and directed the biostatistics core of the

Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) is a multisite study that aims to improve clinical trials for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). This cooperative study combines expertise and funding from the private and pu ...

Education and career

Beckett is a 1968 graduate of Pomona College. She earned her Ph.D. in biostatistics in 1972 at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. Her dissertation, ''Statistical Procedures for Diagnosis Based on Binary Variables'', was supervised by Byron Brown Jr. She worked as a faculty member at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, at

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...

from 1976 to 1981, at Texas A&M University from 1981 to 1987, at the Harvard Medical School from 1987 to 1992, at Rush Medical College in Chicago from 1992 to 2000, and at the University of California, Davis from 2000 until her retirement in 2019.

Recognition

Beckett was named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2004, "for her major contributions to statistical methods for characterizing the distribution and determinants of chronic diseases and other notable achievements".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beckett, Laurel Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American statisticians Women statisticians Biostatisticians Pomona College alumni Stanford University alumni University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty Stony Brook University faculty Texas A&M University faculty Harvard Medical School faculty Rush Medical College faculty University of California, Davis faculty Fellows of the American Statistical Association