William D. Dupont, Ph.D.

Dr. Dupont is a biostatistician whose most important contributions to science have concerned the relationship between benign breast disease and breast cancer risk. He has been the Principal Investigator on five of NIH R01 grants on this topic.  In collaboration with Drs. David L Page, Jeffrey R Smith, and other clinical colleagues he has followed a cohort of 17,000 women with histologically confirmed benign breast disease and has performed nested case-control studies of histologic, immunohistochemical and genetic risk factors for breast cancer in these patients. This work has changed the clinical management of benign breast disease by distinguishing between those benign lesions that were, and were not, associated with increased breast cancer risk. For this work, he and Dr. Page received the Ernest W. Goodpasture award for Collaborative Studies that address important biological problems and their role in disease pathogenesis. He is also a fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Dr. Dupont’s other interests include developing methods and software for power and sample size calculations, studies of the philosophical foundations of statistical inference, and collaborative studies with Dr. David Robertson and colleagues on the etiology and treatment of autonomic diseases, Dr. Tina V. Hartert and colleagues on the causes and prevention of asthma, and Dr. Wayne A. Ray on pharmacoepidemiological studies of the adverse effects of opioids and other drugs.

He is also the Vice-Chair for Academic Affairs of the Department of Biostatistics.