Dr. Layla Parast

Biography

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

Research Interests