Women In Data Science

Manisha Desai is a professor of medicine (research) and of biomedical data science, and director of the Quantitative Sciences Unit at Stanford University. She is an expert in the design and analysis of clinical trials and epidemiologic studies across multiple diseases, including COVID-19. In this podcast, she provides some insights into the challenges and progress of COVID-19 clinical trials.When COVID happened, Manisha knew her team’s expertise in clinical trials would allow them to get up to speed quickly to study this new disease. So, she augmented her team with additional data science experts to focus on trials to identify safe and effective drugs to help prevent hospitalization and disease progression.“This whole period has been so anxiety-inducing for so many of us, it's actually been nice to focus that energy and anxiety towards work that could be part of the solution to some of the crisis,” she says. In studies so far, they have learned that there's a real disparity in outcomes by ethnicity and race a