Dr. Ralph B. D'Agostino is a distinguished Biostatistician and Professor of Biostatistics and Data Science at Wake Forest School of Medicine, where he has established himself as a leading authority in statistical methodology and clinical research. He holds dual directorial roles as Director of the Clinical Research Management Graduate Program and Director of the Biostatistics Shared Resource within the Comprehensive Cancer Center, overseeing a team of over 25 statisticians who support cancer research initiatives. Dr. D'Agostino earned his PhD in Statistics from Harvard University in 1994 and has since built a remarkable three-decade career at Wake Forest, establishing himself as a pillar of the institution's research infrastructure. His professional excellence has been recognized through his election as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2013, a distinction reserved for scholars who have made outstanding contributions to the field.
Dr. D'Agostino has secured over 25 million dollars in federal funding as Principal Investigator, demonstrating his ability to lead large-scale, impactful research initiatives that advance medical science. He served as Director and Co-Director of the Coordinating Center for the CDC/NIDDK funded SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth Study, a landmark investigation of childhood and young adult diabetes conducted from 2001 to 2021 that has profoundly influenced understanding of diabetes epidemiology. With more than 430 published manuscripts and book chapters spanning clinical research, statistical methodology, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, his scholarly output represents exceptional productivity and interdisciplinary reach. His methodological expertise focuses on three critical areas: developing propensity score methods to address confounding in observational studies, creating innovative approaches for handling missing data in research, and constructing predictive analytical models for disease outcomes that have been widely adopted across medical research.
Beyond his individual research contributions, Dr. D'Agostino has significantly shaped the broader scientific community through extensive service on NIH, FDA, and pharmaceutical industry review panels, advisory boards, and data safety-monitoring committees. He has served on six editorial boards for prominent medical and statistical journals, helping to set standards for research quality and methodological rigor across the field. As an educator, he has dedicated himself to training the next generation of researchers through teaching online graduate courses in Research Design and Data Analysis for the Clinical Research Management Graduate Program. Currently, his leadership of the Biostatistics Shared Resource continues to catalyze innovative cancer research by providing sophisticated statistical support to investigators, ensuring that methodological excellence underpins discovery across the Comprehensive Cancer Center's research portfolio.
