Alex Dahlen, PhD is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the NYU School of Global Public Health, where he directs the Biostatistical Collaboration and Consultation Core (BC3). The goal of the BC3 is to bring robust statistical methods and thoughtful study design to public health research, and to train the next generation of data scientists and statisticians in team science and applied statistics. Dr. Dahlen has over a decade of experience working in collaborative statistics, across a variety of settings in and out of academia.
Since founding the BC3 in Fall 2023, Dr. Dahlen has led its growth into a hub for collaborative statistical support across NYU. His current research interests span efficient design of pragmatic and real-world trials and causal inference with observational data, with applications across public health. His recent work has appeared in JAMA Health Forum, the American Journal of Epidemiology, and Pediatric Research, among others. He was recognized with the Best Presented Paper award from the Collaborative Statistics Section at JSM 2025. He also devotes a large portion of his time to mentoring junior scientists: providing hands-on coding sessions, overseeing analysis, offering study design and methodology tutorials, and lecturing about healthy research practices. Dr. Dahlen received his PhD in the physics of bubbles from Princeton University in 2011.
About the Biostatistics Public Lecture Series
The Department of Biostatistics Public Lecture Series is a nontechnical and accessible series discussing topics of interest to everyone who works with data, including students.
The inaugural lecture will be given by Dr. Alex Dahlen. Dr. Dahlen will be speaking about his award-winning paper that he delivered at the 2025 Joint Statistical Meetings sponsored by the American Statistical Association.
He will describe day-to-day life as a collaborative statistician in academic research and walk through two case studies from his own work: an observational study of a rare surgical procedure, and root-cause analysis of the recent decline in opioid overdose deaths. He'll also discuss the broader culture of clinical research, including how biostatisticians are too often called on to validate study designs after the fact rather than shape them, and offer recommendations for how the field can change.
