Ron Brookmeyer

Dr. Ron Brookmeyer serves as dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. In his research, Dr. Brookmeyer uses the tools of the statistical, informational and mathematical sciences to address global public health problems. During a span of over three decades he developed statistical methods that sounded the alarm which helped address major global health challenges of our times. Dr. Brookmeyer earned worldwide recognition for his work on predicting the magnitude of the impending HIV/AIDS epidemic with work beginning in the mid-1980s. Dr. Brookmeyer has called attention to the looming Alzheimer’s disease epidemic through widely cited studies. His work on global public health problems also includes issues in bio-security, disease surveillance and health challenges of aging populations. Dr. Brookmeyer’s research interests in biostatistical methodology include survival analysis, epidemic models, epidemiological methods and clinical trials. 

Dr. Brookmeyer is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He received the American Public Health Association’s Spiegelman gold medal for significant contributions to health statistics. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. Prior to his arrival at UCLA in 2010, Dr. Brookmeyer was Professor of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health where he served as the Director of the schoolwide interdepartmental Master of Public Health Program. He was awarded the Stebbins Medal from Johns Hopkins University for outstanding contributions to educational programs. 

Dr. Brookmeyer was the 2011 Lester Breslow Distinguished Lecturer at UCLA, the 2012 Donna J. Brogan Lecturer at Emory University, and the 2014 Norman Breslow Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Washington. Dr. Brookmeyer is the recipient of the American Statistical Association’s Nathan Mantel Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions at the intersection of statistical science and epidemiology and the Karl E. Peace Award for outstanding statistical contributions for the betterment of society. He has served on numerous editorial boards and national scientific panels including the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council, the Institute of Medicine Panel on methodological challenges in HIV prevention trials, and the Institute of Medicine Panel to evaluate the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). 

Dr. Brookmeyer is currently a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science magazine.

Visit Dr. Brookmeyer's website.

Education

  • PhD, Statistics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 1980
  • MS, Statistics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 1977
  • BS, Mathematics, The Cooper Union, New York, NY, 1975

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Selected Publications

  • Brookmeyer R., Morrison D., Estimating Vaccine Effectiveness by Linking Population-Based Health Registries: Some Sources of Bias, American Journal of Epidemiology, 2022, kwac145.
  • Brookmeyer R. Predictions about where the coronavirus pandemic is going vary widely. Can models be trusted? Op-Ed,  Los Angeles Times, April 22, 2020.  
  • Dean NE, Gsell PS, Brookmeyer R, et al. Creating a framework for conducting randomized clinical trials during disease outbreaks. New England Journal of Medicine 382:1366-9, 2020.
  • Brookmeyer R, Abdalla N. Design and sample size considerations for Alzheimer’s disease prevention trials using multistate models. Clinical Trials 16:111-119, 2019.
  • Brookmeyer R, Abdalla N. Multistate Models and Lifetime Risk Estimation: Application to Alzheimer’s Disease. Statistics in Medicine 38: 1503-1528, 2019.
  • Brookmeyer R, Abdalla N, Kawas C, Corrada M. Forecasting the prevalence of preclinical and clinical Alzheimer’s disease in the United States. Alzheimer’s & Dementia 14:121-129, 2018.
  • Brookmeyer R, Abdalla N. Estimation of Lifetime risks of Alzheimer’s disease dementia using biomarker for preclinical disease. Alzheimer’s & Dementia 14: 981-988, 2018.
  • Brookmeyer R, Johnson E, Ziegler-Graham K, Arrighi HM. Forecasting the Global Burden of Alzheimer’s Disease,  Alzheimer’s and Dementia. 3:186-191, 2007.
  • Brookmeyer R, Johnson E, Bollinger R. Public Health Vaccination Policies for Containing an Anthrax Outbreak, Nature. 432(7019):901-904, 2004.
  • Brookmeyer R, Johnson E, Bollinger R. Modeling the optimum duration of antibiotic prophylaxis in an anthrax outbreak. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 100(17):10129-32, 2003.
  • Brookmeyer R and Quinn T. Estimation of Current HIV Incidence Rates from a Cross-Sectional Survey Using Early Diagnostic Tests, American Journal of Epidemiology. 141:166-172, 1995.
  • Brookmeyer R and Gail MH. AIDS Epidemiology: A Quantitative Approach, Oxford University Press, 354 pages, 1994.
  • Brookmeyer R. Reconstruction and Future Trends of the AIDS Epidemic in the United States, Science. 253:37-42, 1991.

Selected Honors

  • Board of Reviewing Editors of Science Magazine, 2014-present
  • Elected member of the National Academy of Medicine
  • Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • American Statistical Association Mantel Lifetime Achievement Award