Alisa Stephens-Shields

Alisa J. Stephens-Shields is an American biostatistician whose research focuses on the statistics of clinical trials, including cluster-randomised controlled trials, longitudinal data, semiparametric models, and causal inference.^[1] She is an associate professor of biostatistics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has been a collaborator on studies on pelvic pain and on the effects of testosterone treatment on older men.^[2] She also holds an adjunct faculty position at Harvard University.^[3]

Early life and education

Stephens-Shields is African American. She grew up as the youngest of three children in Teaneck, New Jersey.^[1][4] Her father, who grew up nearby, worked as a civil engineer, and her mother was an immigrant from Jamaica. She enjoyed playing computer puzzle games as a teenager, and after graduating from Teaneck High School,^[4] she majored in mathematics, with a minor in Spanish, as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, College Park.^[2] Her interest in biostatistics and public health began in her junior year, and continued with a research project at Rutgers University the following summer, and a senior-year internship at the National Cancer Institute.^[1][4] After graduating in 2006,^[2] and six months of community service in Costa Rica,^[1] she continued her studies in statistics in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. She received a master's degree there in 2009, and completed her Ph.D. in 2012.^[2]

Recognition

Stephens-Shields was named to the Leadership Academy of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies in 2021.^[5] She was named as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2023.^[1] She was the recipient of the 2024 Myrto Lefkopoulou Distinguished Lectureship at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.^[3]