Manisha Desai

Manisha Desai, PhD, Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Biomedical Informatics; Professor, Departments of Biomedical Data Science and of (by courtesy), Epidemiology and Population Health, Stanford University School of Medicine 

Research Description: Dr. Desai is the founder and director of the Stanford Quantitative Sciences Unit (QSU), a biostatistical unit created in 2009 of over 25 faculty, PhD-, and Masters-level staff to provide the statistical infrastructure for large-scale research projects at the School of Medicine. The group maintains a portfolio of over 150 projects. Prior to her appointment at Stanford, Dr. Desai was a member of the faculty in the Department of Biostatistics at Columbia University from 2000 to 2009, where she advised students, mentored junior faculty and collaborated with investigators in the design and analysis of studies. In her position at Stanford, she co-leads the Clinical & Translational Core for the Stanford Diabetes Research Center (SDRC). In addition to her leadership in the SDRC, she leads the Biostatistics Shared Resource for the Stanford Cancer Institute and the Biostatistics Epidemiology and Research Design (BERD) for the Clinical and Translational Science Award. Additionally, she leads the statistical component on a variety of medical studies that pose methodological challenges. The areas of her expertise include missing data, clinical trial design, and methods for generalizing trial findings to the real world. Dr. Desai collaborates with multiple SDRC members. Dr. Desai will serve as Director of the Clinical & Translational Core starting in 2022, and oversee biostatistical and data management consulting in the CTC Advanced Analytics Support.

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC Members in BOLD):

  1. Prahalad P, Yang J, Scheinker D, Desai M, Hood K, Maahs DM. Hemoglobin A1c Trajectory in Pediatric Patients with Newly Diagnosed Type 1 Diabetes. Diabetes Technol Ther. 2019 Aug;21(8):456-461. doi: 10.1089/dia.2019.0065. PMID: 31180244; PMCID: PMC7001422. 

  2. Gardner CD, Trepanowski JF, Del Gobbo LC, Hauser ME, Rigdon J, Ioannidis JPA, Desai M, King AC. Effect of Low-Fat vs Low-Carbohydrate Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults and the Association With Genotype Pattern or Insulin Secretion: The DIETFITS Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2018 Feb 20;319(7):667-679. doi: 10.1001/jama.2018.0245. PMID: 29466592; PMCID: PMC5839290. 

  3. Zhou Z, Jardine M, Perkovic V, Matthews DR, Mahaffey KW, de Zeeuw D, Fulcher G, Desai M, Oh R, Simpson R, Watts NB, Neal B. Canagliflozin and fracture risk in individuals with type 2 diabetes: results from the CANVAS Program. Diabetologia. 2019 Oct;62(10):1854-1867. doi: 10.1007/s00125-019-4955-5. PMID: 31399845; PMCID: PMC6731200.

  4. Saquib N, Brunner R, Desai M, Allison M, Garcia L, Stefanick ML. Association between physical health and cardiovascular diseases: Effect modification by chronic conditions. SAGE Open Med. 2018 Jul 11;6:2050312118785335. doi: 10.1177/2050312118785335. PMID: 30013784; PMCID: PMC6041849.