

Research Bio
Maya L. Petersen, MD, PhD is Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology (UC Berkeley) and of Computational Precision Health (UCSF and UC Berkeley), Berkeley Director of the UCSF-UC Berkeley Joint Program in Computational Precision Health, and co-Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Targeted Machine Learning and Causal Inference. Dr. Petersen’s methodological research sits at the intersection of machine learning/AI, statistical inference, and causal inference, with emphasis on complex observational and experimental data, individualized treatment strategies, and study designs that adapt to incoming data. Her applied research focuses on community and global health, with an emphasis on applying machine learning and cutting-edge statistical methods to treatment and prevention of HIV, hypertension and other health conditions in rural East Africa.
Dr. Petersen holds an AB from Stanford University in Human Biology, a PhD from UC Berkeley in Biostatistics, and an MD from UCSF. She has more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and has led multiple NIH and foundation grants, including the Sustainable East Africa Research in Community Health consortium. Dr. Petersen has received multiple awards, including a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Pre-doctoral award, a Doris Duke Clinical Scientist Development award, and a national teaching award from the American Statistical Association. In 2021, Mayor London Breed named June 18 “Maya Petersen Day” in San Francisco in acknowledgement of her services to the COVID-19 pandemic response.
Research Expertise and Interest
causal inference, precision health, Health AI, targeted learning, HIV, global health, pandemics
In the News
Innovative Joint Program in Computational Precision Health at UC Berkeley and UCSF Aims to Improve Quality and Equity of Health Care
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Featured in the Media
San Francisco was a few days into sheltering in place in March 2020 when Dr. Maya Petersen got a surprising and urgent request: Health officials wanted to know whether she could put together a model that would help them forecast what was shaping up to be a horrifying pandemic.