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Headshot of Nichole Carlson

Nichole Carlson PhD

Professor, Director (CIDA)
  • Center for Innovative Design & Analysis
  • Department of Biostatistics & Informatics

Dr. Carlson is a professor in the Department of Biostatistics & Informatics and the director of the Center for Innovative Design & Analysis (CIDA) at the Colorado School of Public Health. As CIDA director, Dr. Carlson leads a diverse team of data experts with a mission to accelerate the transformation of health data into discovery, improved care, and new understanding—all in real time.

Dr. Carlson has nearly two decades of experience as a collaborative biostatistician and methods researcher. She is also integrally involved in clinical and translational research through her directorship of the Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design program (BERD) of the CCTSI.

Her collaborative expertise is varied with an emphasis in endocrinology, reproductive health, and more recently, lung diseases. Her methodology expertise is in the development of Bayesian approaches for modeling data, and the application of spatial modeling and radiomics to lung CT imaging. This expertise involves computational statistics, custom code development, and creating solutions to big data problems.



What's in your data?    Breakthrough   


"Teasing out meaningful patterns from regular variation is challenging. Biostatisticians can help to formulate an efficient study and make sense of the data in the end."

"Working with numbers in a way that impact human life is exciting. It is fun knowing that my math expertise is applied in a way that impacts people and the future."


Areas of Expertise

  • Image analysis
  • Bayesian modeling
  • Longitudinal data
  • General clinical research
  • Reproductive health
  • Endocrinology research

Education, Licensure & Certifications

  • PhD, Biostatistics, University of Michigan
  • MS, Biostatistics, University of Michigan
  • BS, Math and Statistics, University of Minnesota

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