Myrto Lefkopoulou Distinguished Lectureship

We are extremely pleased to announce that Dr. Marco Carone, Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Washington School of Public Health, will be the recipient of the 2025 Myrto Lefkopoulou Distinguished Lectureship!

Dr. Marco Carone is scheduled to give an in-person lecture at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health on Thursday, September 25th.

Lecture will be held in FXB-301 followed by a reception in the FXB Atrium.

Biography

Dr. Marco Carone is a distinguished biostatistician whose work has significantly advanced the fields of causal inference, survival analysis, and the development of robust statistical methodologies for analyzing complex observational data. His research is characterized by a rigorous theoretical foundation and a deep commitment to solving pressing public health problems. Dr. Carone currently serves as a Professor of Biostatistics and adjunct Professor of Statistics at the University of Washington School of Public Health, where he additionally holds the prestigious Norman Breslow Endowed Faculty Fellowship—an honor named after one of the pioneers of modern biostatistics. He is also an Affiliate Investigator at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, working in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, where his work supports the development and evaluation of medical interventions for infectious disease, through the use of real-world data.

Dr. Carone earned his PhD in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins University, where he trained in advanced statistical theory and public health applications. He completed his undergraduate studies in Probability and Statistics at McGill University in Canada. A formative period in his career was his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, under the mentorship of Professor Mark van der Laan, a leading figure in modern statistical methodology. There, Dr. Carone helped develop and refine targeted minimum loss-based estimation (TMLE), a foundational approach in causal inference that has become widely adopted in both academia and applied health research. His scholarship has since expanded to encompass a broad methodological toolkit, including targeted learning, semiparametric and nonparametric inference, and the integration of machine learning techniques in epidemiological and clinical studies. His work frequently addresses challenges in high-dimensional, sparse, and incomplete data, which are increasingly prevalent in large-scale biomedical and electronic health record-based studies.

Dr. Carone’s research has appeared in top-tier journals across statistics, epidemiology, and public health. He has also served as a co-investigator and principal investigator on multiple federally funded projects, including efforts to improve statistical methods for evaluating treatment effects from routinely collected health data. Dr. Carone’s career exemplifies the mission of the Myrto Lefkopoulou Distinguished Lectureship at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which honors early-career biostatisticians whose work demonstrates excellence in methodological innovation, biostatistical education, and impact on public health. Dr. Carone’s ability to combine rigorous theory with practical applications, along with his leadership in research and mentoring, reflect the values celebrated by this distinguished lectureship.

Through his mentorship, teaching, and collaborative research, he continues to shape the field of biostatistics and public health. His work stands as a model for how cutting-edge methodology can be harnessed to address pressing health questions, making him a truly outstanding figure in the field.

About the Award

Established in memory of Myrto Lefkopoulou, this lectureship is awarded to a promising statistical who has made contributions to either collaborative or methodological research in the applications of statistical methods to biology or medicine, or who has shown excellence in the teaching of Biostatistics.

Ordinarily, the lectureship is given to a statistician who has earned a doctorate in the last fifteen years. The lecture is presented to a general scientific audience as the first Department colloquium of each academic year. The lectureship includes travel to Boston, a reception following the lecture, and an honorarium of $1000.

Nominations

Please include the candidate’s CV and a letter of nomination describing the contributions of the candidate, specifically highlighting the criteria for the award. Additional letters of support would be extremely helpful as well. Nominations are due July 18th, 2025

Please send nominations to: kpietrini@hsph.harvard.edu.

Recent Awardees

Past Recipients included:

• 2024 Alisa Stephens-Shields
• 2023 Stephanie Hicks
• 2022 Jeffery T. Leek
• 2021  Antonio Gasparrini
• 2020  Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen
• 2019  Veera Baladandayuthapani
• 2018  Elizabeth Stuart
• 2017  Ciprian Crainiceanu
• 2016  Mahlet Tadesse
• 2015  Debashis Ghosh
• 2014  Tianxi Cai
• 2013  Nilanjan Chatterjee
• 2012  Rafael Irizarry
• 2011  Jeffrey Morris
• 2010  David Dunson
• 2009  Xihong Lin
• 2008  Heping Zhang
• 2007  Francesca Dominici
• 2006  Jianqing Fan
• 2005  Mark van der Laan
• 2004  Geert Molenberghs
• 2003  Marie Davidian
• 2002  Danyu Lin
• 2001  Bradley P. Carlin
• 2000  Steven N. Goodman
• 1999  Giovanni Parmigianni
• 1998  Kathryn Roeder
• 1997  Ronald S. Brookmeyer
• 1996  Trevor J. Hastie
• 1995  Hans-George Mueller
• 1994  Michael L. Boehnke
• 1993  Louise Ryan