Leadership

Co-Director of the Harvard Data Science Initiative

In her current role as co-director of the Data Science Initiative at Harvard University, Dr. Dominici is building on the collaborations that already exist across the University to foster a rich and cohesive data science community, bringing together scholars from across disciplines and schools. In addition to carrying out the academic plan of the initiative, she oversees the operations and distribution of seed funding and helps to raise funds to support its key programmatic activities.

Co-PI for the BUSPH-HSPH Climate Change and Health Research Coordinating Center, CAFÉ

Dr. Dominici is one of the lead PIs for the BUSPH-HSPH Climate Change and Health Research Coordinating Center, CAFÉ. The CAFÉ is a three-year cooperative agreement with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a critical component of the NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative to manage and support ongoing climate change and health research and capacity building efforts.

The CAFÉ RCC Website is now live! Please visit www.climatehealthcafe.org to learn more about our CAFÉ, find resources to enable and accelerate your work on Climate Change and Health, join our Community of Practice, and get the most up-to-date information on pilot funding, our annual meeting, and more!

Founder and Lead-PI for the National Studies on Air Pollution and Health Group (NSAPH)

Dr. Dominici is the founder and the lead PI for the National Studies on Air Pollution and Health Group (NSAPH), which is a group of faculty, research scientists, post-doctoral fellows, graduate students, and college students studying data science methodologies in the context of climate change, environmental impacts on health outcomes, and regulatory policy. The group has over 100 members and includes 25 Principal Investigators & Faculty over 12 institutions.

Program Co-Director of the Environmental Stats Training Grant

Francesca Dominici, PhD; (Professor of Biostatistics and Associate Dean of Information Technology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) serves as Program Co-director of the Environmental Stats Training Grant. She is currently co-PI of the Project “A causal inference framework to support policy decisions by evaluating the effectiveness of past and future air pollution control strategies” in the Harvard-EPA Air, Climate, and Energy (ACE) Center, and co-PI, with Dr. Lin, of an NCI-funded P01 grant “Statistical Informatics in Cancer Research”.  She is also the PI of a large grant funded by the Health Effects Institute to develop methods in causal inference and estimate health effects of exposure to low ambient levels of air pollution.

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Past Roles:

Senior Associate Dean for Research

The Harvard Chan School has a large and comprehensive research portfolio, spanning the behavioral, population and biological sciences. With research being conducted in nine academic departments and multiple school-wide research centers, faculty receive funding from a variety of federal and non-federal sources.

In her past role as Senior Associate Dean for Research from November 2013 to February 2017, Dr. Dominici led advancements to address institutional challenges, maximize opportunities, and optimize the health of the Harvard Chan School’s research enterprise. She oversaw the School’s Office of Research Strategy and Development (ORSD), which provides catalytic and strategic support for the School’s research. Dr. Dominici led ORSD’s flagship faculty grant-writing short course, and in addition to her own extensive research program, she provided scientific leadership in the submission of numerous proposals designed to advance the School’s and University’s scientific innovation.

Associate Dean of Information Technology

Public Health, although interdisciplinary by nature, has evolved into a field that is rooted in data science. Nearly every major scientific revolution in history has been driven by one thing: data. Today, the availability of Big Data from a wide variety of sources is transforming health and biomedical research into an information science, where discovery is driven by our ability to effectively collect, manage, analyze, and interpret data.

As a biostatistician whose research focuses on analyzing large administrative data to estimate health outcomes for a variety of exposure variables, Dr. Dominici’s experience and expertise has positioned her to navigate the Big Data landscape in a way that allows faculty to effectively manage challenges and capitalize on opportunities related to Big Data.

In her past role as Associate Dean of Information Technology, Dr. Dominici led new initiatives to improve the research computing infrastructure at the Harvard Chan School. She worked closely with the senior leadership at the School of Public Health and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) to execute a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to allow Chan School faculty, researchers, staff, and students to access the FAS Research Computing environment (Odyssey). Odyssey is Harvard’s largest supercomputer, spanning three data centers for a total of 9,641 square feet dedicated to compute. Access to this state-of-the-art computing cluster has transformed the research computing landscape at the Chan School, positioning the School at the forefront of the Big Data revolution and allowing Chan School faculty to pursue Big Data driven research that is pushing the frontiers of science. Learn more about research computing at the Harvard Chan School.