Dr. Sander Greenland is a distinguished Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology and Statistics at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, where he has made seminal contributions to epidemiologic methodology for over four decades. Born on January 16, 1951, he earned honors Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a Regent's and National Science Foundation Fellow in Mathematics. He subsequently pursued his graduate studies in epidemiology at UCLA, receiving his Master's and Doctoral degrees, and joined the UCLA Epidemiology faculty in 1980. Dr. Greenland advanced to Associate Professor in 1984 and Professor of Epidemiology in 1989, later achieving the dual appointment as Professor of Statistics in the UCLA College of Letters and Science in 1999. His distinguished academic career culminated in his transition to Emeritus status in 2012, though he continues to actively contribute to the field through research and scholarly engagement.
Dr. Greenland is internationally recognized as a leading contributor to epidemiologic statistics, theory, and methods, with particular expertise in the limitations and appropriate application of statistical approaches in observational research. His extensive scholarly output includes more than 400 articles and book chapters in epidemiology and statistics, along with co-authorship of the seminal textbook Modern Epidemiology, now in its third edition, which has profoundly influenced epidemiological education worldwide. His methodological innovations in areas including Bayesian and causal inference, bias analysis, and meta-analysis have established new standards for rigorous evidence evaluation in nonexperimental studies, particularly in the context of postmarketing surveillance of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Dr. Greenland's focus on identifying and addressing statistical misinterpretations has provided critical frameworks for improving research quality across epidemiology, with his methodological critiques often serving as reference points for resolving controversies in public health research. His work has significantly shaped how researchers interpret p-values, confidence intervals, and other statistical measures that form the foundation of evidence-based medicine.
Beyond his scholarly contributions, Dr. Greenland has served on editorial boards of leading statistics and epidemiology journals and provided expert consultation to numerous governmental and international agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Control and Prevention, and World Health Organization. He has been honored with the Lester Breslow Lifetime Achievement Award and elected as a Fellow of both the American Statistical Association and the Royal Statistical Society, recognizing his transformative impact on the field. In 2013, the University of Aarhus awarded him an honorary Doctor of Medicine for his contributions to statistical and epidemiologic methods for drug and device safety evaluation, underscoring the international recognition of his work. Dr. Greenland remains an influential voice in methodological debates, frequently invited to speak at conferences worldwide, and continues to advance critical discussions about statistical practice through his scholarly writings that address contemporary challenges in epidemiology and public health research.
