Anita DeStefano

Anita L. DeStefano, Ph.D. is Professor of biostatistics, Associate Professor of neurology, and Associate Director of the BUMC Genome Science Institute. She served for 10 years as Co-Director of the Biostatistics Program, which grants MA and Ph.D degrees in biostatistics and is current Director of the Graduate Certificate Program in statistical genetics.

Dr. DeStefano developed a course in Statistical genetics (BS858), which is taught to MPH, Biostatistics program, and other graduate students. She is also an instructor and co-PI of the BU Summer Institute for Training in Biostatistics program. She has taught or served as course coordinator for Introduction to statistical computing (BS723) for over 18 years.
Her main research interest is statistical genetics. She is an investigator in the multi-national GenePD study working to identify the genes contributing Parkinson disease.

Dr. DeStefano is also a senior statistical geneticist for the Framingham Heart Study focusing on strokes, Alzheimer's disease and related endophenotypes including brain MRI measures. She is a key member of the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium Neurology working group and of the International Genomics of Alzheimer Disease (IGAP) consortium. She is currently leading QC efforts in the joint NHGRI/NIA Alzheimer Disease Sequencing Project. Dr. DeStefano has been instrumental in developing research computing resources for BUMC. She currently is a member of the BU IS&T Research Computing Governance Committee and serves as co-chair of the Shared Compute Cluster subcomittee.