Rate My Professor Douglas Landsittel

Douglas Landsittel, PhD, serves as Chair of the Department of Biostatistics in the University at Buffalo’s School of Public Health and Health Professions, a position he assumed in February 2024. He earned a BS in Applied Mathematics in 1992 and a PhD in Biostatistics in 1997 from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to UB, Landsittel was Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and held the James A. Caplin, M.D. Chair in Evidence-Based Medicine at Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington since 2021. Over two decades at the University of Pittsburgh, he served as Professor of biomedical informatics, biostatistics, medicine, and clinical and translational science, with leadership roles as Associate Director of the Biostatistics Facility at the Hillman Cancer Center, Associate Director of the Center for Research on Healthcare Data Center, Director of Biostatistics for Research at the Starzl Transplant Institute, and Lead Methodologist for the Comparative Effectiveness Research Center. Earlier, at the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, he held positions such as Team Leader, Acting Branch Chief, Senior Statistician, and Senior Fellow across three divisions.

Landsittel’s research focuses on the design and analysis of intervention studies and prognostic models using neural networks and tree-based methods, applied to biomarker research, occupational studies, critical care medicine, kidney and liver transplantation, and polycystic kidney disease. He employs propensity score-based methods and causal inference techniques in nonrandomized studies and comparative effectiveness research, alongside data coordination for multi-site studies. He leads the data coordinating center for the longest-running polycystic kidney disease study and directs the Data Coordinating Center for the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s Discovery Network. With over 170 collaborative publications, key works include “A prospective study of back belts for prevention of back pain and injury” (JAMA, 2000), “Gene expression alterations in prostate cancer predicting tumor aggression” (J Clin Oncol, 2004), “Development and validation of a calculator for estimating the probability of urinary tract infections in young febrile children” (JAMA Pediatr, 2018), and “Target Trial Emulation: A Design Tool for Cancer Clinical Trials” (JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics, 2023). A Fellow of the American Statistical Association, he chaired the NIH Safety and Occupational Health Study Section (2021-2023), served on other NIH panels, reviewed over 100 committees, and received 11 publication awards including multiple Alice Hamilton Awards, the Hattie Becich Award for Best Teacher, and the Big Ten Academic Alliance Department Executive Officer Fellow.