The Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics is pleased to announce that Roland Matsouaka, PhD, has been appointed the Associate Chair for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in the department, effective October 1, 2024.
Dr. Matsouaka succeeds Laine Thomas, who has stepped down from this role to take on her new position as Vice Chair.
Dr. Matsouaka is an associate professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics and is also affiliated with the Duke Cancer Clinical Research Institute and the Consortium for the Holistic Assessment of Risk in Transplant (CHART), which aims to impart foundational change to the process of collecting, organizing, and employing data to determine patient eligibility for transplant. This will lead to improve equity in access to care, increased transparency in the transplant selection process and improved value for patients and clinicians. The CHART will also develop and test interventions that improve clinicians’ ability to assess transplant-related risks across multiple domains and equity in access to transplant.
Dr. Matsouaka’s research interests focus on hierarchical endpoints, nonparametric, semiparametric, and causal inference, methods for comparative effectiveness studies, clinical trials affected by non-compliance, not-so-perfect experiments, and observational studies.
As one of the leaders of DCRI Outcomes, Endpoints, and Estimands (O2E) Program, he advises investigators in the design and implementation of clinical trials that use hierarchical endpoints and on the validation of patient-reported outcomes. Finally, he co-leads O2E studios and O2E forums and provides didactic courses and hands-on trainings on the use of hierarchical endpoints.
Dr. Matsouaka’s extensive expertise brings valuable perspectives to our continued efforts in promoting EDI initiatives within our community. Congratulations to Dr. Matsouaka on his new role.