Layla Parast

Layla Parast joined the Statistics and Data Sciences faculty in January 2022. Previously, she was a senior statistician at the RAND Corporation and co-director of the Center for Causal Inference. She was the principal investigator of an R01 from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases that focuses on developing novel nonparametric statistical methods to assess the value of surrogate markers of diabetes using data from the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study. Her substantive research at RAND was focused on evaluating patient experience, developing and testing quality measures in a variety of settings, investigating process-outcome relationships, assessing quality of care, evaluating substance use screening tools in a pediatric setting, and examining the effects of interventions aimed at reducing substance use and risky behaviors.