Dr. Bhramar Mukherjee, Senior Associate Dean of Public Health Data Science and Data Equity at Yale University, will serve as this year's Distinguished Lecturer in Statistics and Biostatistics. Her lecture titled "The Importance of Statistical Thinking in an AI-Augmented World" will be held Monday, April 14th at 4:00PM downtown at the Wake Biotech Auditorium. 

Abstract: In this presentation, I will first delve into the obvious: AI algorithms andsystems developed on exclusionary datasets can lead to erroneousconclusions and misguided policies. However, while we strive for dataequity and wait for the ideal scenario of globally representativedatasets or training corpora, statisticians play a pivotal role inmitigating systematic sources of bias in analyzing LARGE healthcaredata—an expertise that few other quantitative disciplines possess. Iwill illustrate my point by two examples: (1) Handling selection bias andoutcome misclassification in analyzing electronic health records (2)Combining data across multiple biobanks/healthcare systems underheterogenous sampling strategies. I will conclude the talk with a call toarms for statisticians to lead efforts for creating, curating, collectingdata and pioneering new scientific studies, not just remain on thedesign and analytic fringes. As public health statisticians, our job is notjust to predict efficiently, but to prevent effectively.