Distinguished Professor of Biostatistics Retires

Laurel Beckett retires July 2019 after an esteemed academic career spanning more than four decades. She was recruited to UC Davis Health Department of Public Health Sciences in 2000 to found the Division of Biostatistics. Beckett has been director of the Shared Biostatistics Resource for the Comprehensive Cancer Center since its inception and played similar leadership roles for the Clinical and Translational Sciences Center and the Alzheimer Disease Center at UC Davis. Under her leadership UC Davis has become a coordinating center for major national studies and won national recognition for these centers. She has directed the Biostatistics Core for the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative from the time of its founding in 2004.

A main theme of Beckett's research has been the public health impact of chronic diseases of aging, especially Alzheimer’s disease. She also has a strong interest in Cancer Research.  Her collaborations span the field from basic science to clinical trials to care-giving and community-based research. Her work builds on strong mathematical training and an interest in applying discrete mathematical tools creatively to biomedical research.

For her major contributions to statistical methods for characterizing the distribution and determinants of chronic diseases and other notable achievements, she was recognized as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2004.

Laurel graduated with a Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford in 1972. Prior to coming to UC Davis, she was a faculty member at the University of Illinois; SUNY-Stony Brook; Texas A&M, where she was the first woman to receive tenure in the Department of Statistics and one of the first tenured women faculty in the Sciences; Harvard University, and Rush University, where she met her husband Daniel Tancredi, Ph.D.

She has been a career and scientific mentor for numerous students and colleagues and has delighted in seeing them take on important leadership roles. Her passion for mentoring and diverse representation in scientific research earned her a Deans’ Award for Excellence in Mentoring in 2002 and a Dean’s Team Award for Inclusion Excellence in the area of Research in 2017.

Beckett is not only a brilliant researcher but a dedicated educator. She was part of the founding faculty of the UC Davis Graduate Group in Biostatistics when it began in 2002 and has fulfilled important roles in shaping that program and supervising doctoral and master’s students. She developed statistics education for trainees in the School of Medicine and much of the statistics and clinical research curriculum for the Mentored Clinical Research Training and other clinical research training programs at UC Davis.

Beckett has long been a champion for women in academic medicine, researching and co-authoring a study aimed at shifting organizational culture that limits use of flexible career policies in academia.