# Biography

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Prior to this, I was an NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellow, working on causal inference and machine learning applied to problems with complex study designs, especially vaccine efficacy trials. I obtained my PhD in biostatistics from UC Berkeley, where I worked on non-/semi-parametric estimation and causal inference for continuous-valued exposures and on mediation analysis. In that time, I was on the founding core development team of the tlverse project, an open-source software ecosystem for targeted learning, and I enjoyed eclectic scientific collaborations with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Netflix Research.

My research interests combine causal inference and machine learning, aiming to formulate robust, efficient, and assumption-lean methods for statistical inference from a translational perspective, tailoring these to specific questions and issues arising in collaborative science. Broadly, I am motivated by methodological topics from non- and semi-parametric (or model-agnostic) inference and corresponding efficiency theory, high-dimensional inference, (targeted) loss-based estimation, the handling of biased sampling procedures, and adaptive experimental designs. While I maintain diverse scientific interests, I have recently been captivated by problems, both statistical and substantive, that arise in the study of infectious diseases and in their epidemiology. I am also deeply interested in high-performance statistical computing and in the development of open-source software for the promotion of reproducibility, transparency, and “data analytic hygiene” in the practice of applied statistics and statistical data science.

### Interests

• causal machine learning and causal inference, missing data
• non- and semi-parametric inference and efficiency theory
• high-dimensional inference and bias correction procedures
• statistical machine learning, nonparametric estimation
• statistical computing and reproducible data science

### Education

• PhD in Biostatistics (designated emphasis in Computational & Genomic Biology), 2021

University of California, Berkeley

• MA in Biostatistics, 2017

University of California, Berkeley

• BA with a triple major in Molecular & Cell Biology (em. Neurobiology), Psychology, and Public Health, 2015

University of California, Berkeley

# Recent Publications

(see CV for a full list)

Quickly discover relevant content by filtering publications.
(2022). A generalization of moderated statistics to data adaptive semiparametric estimation in high-dimensional biology. In Statistical Methods in Medical Research.

(2022). haldensify: Highly adaptive lasso conditional density estimation in R. In Journal of Open Source Software.

(2022). Cross-validated loss-based covariance matrix estimator selection in high dimensions. In Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics.

# Teaching

## current courses

I won’t be teaching during the 2022-2023 academic year. I’ll resume in 2023-2024.

## Carpentries workshops

I am a member of Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry, through which I work on curriculum development, maintenance of lesson materials, and workshop delivery.

# Software

Collected collateral damage from doing statistics research, hopefully useful to others.

## Targeted Learning in the tlverse

The tlverse is an ecosystem of R packages for Targeted Learning, of which I am a co-founder and core developer. A few of the tlverse packages to which I’ve made significant contributions include

## Causal Machine Learning

A significant focus of my research program centers on the intersection of causal inference and statistical machine learning. I’ve (co-)developed R packages for a range of problems: causal mediation analysis, evaluating the effects of stochastic interventions under two-phase sampling, conditional density estimation, causal segment discovery and offline policy evaluation, and survival analysis.

• sherlock: An R package for employing causal machine learning and non/semi-parametric estimation to discover population segments (or subgroups) based on treatment effect heterogeneity. Flexible techniques for defining segment-specific treatment rules and efficient estimators of the causal effects of these dynamic treatment regimes are implemented. Joint work with Wenjing Zheng as part of an internship at Netflix Research.
[Docs] | [GitHub]

• medshift: An R package for estimating the population intervention (in)direct effects based on stochastic interventions. Classical and efficient estimators are supported for the effects of incremental propensity score interventions and modified treatment policies. Joint work with Iván Díaz.
[Docs] | [GitHub]

• medoutcon: An R package for efficient estimation of interventional (in)direct effects subject to intermediate confounding, including one-step and targeted minimum loss estimators. Joint work with Iván Díaz and Kara Rudolph.
[Docs] | [GitHub] | [Paper]

• txshift: An R package for efficient estimation of and inference on causal effects of stochastic interventions on continuous-valued exposures. Robust estimation and efficient inference under two-phased sampling is supported. Joint work with David Benkeser.
[Docs] | [GitHub] | [CRAN] | [Paper]

• haldensify: An R package for nonparametric conditional density estimation based on the highly adaptive lasso, designed for estimating the generalized propensity score. Joint work with David Benkeser and Mark van der Laan.
[Docs] | [GitHub] | [CRAN]

• survtmle: An R package for the construction of targeted maximum likelihood estimates of marginal cumulative incidence in right-censored survival settings with and without competing risks, including estimation procedures that respect bounds. Joint work with David Benkeser.
[Docs] | [GitHub] | [CRAN]

## High-Dimensional Biology

A parallel thread of my research concerns the development of novel statistical methodology for application in high-dimensional and computational biology. I have (co-)developed several R packages extending the Bioconductor Project.