Daniel Evan Schwartz

About Me

I am a biostatistician working as an Instructor in Investigation at Massachusetts General Hospital Biostatistics and an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

I have a long-standing interest in improving the efficiency and informativeness of clinical trials. I am also currently working on risk prediction and early detection of cancer.

Before coming to MGH, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, working with Lorenzo Trippa and Briana Stephenson. I completed a PhD in Biostatistics with Yuan Ji, an MS in Statistics with Matthew Stephens, and a BA in Tutorial Studies with Stephen Raudenbush, all at the University of Chicago.

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Research

Much of my research focuses on developing Bayesian solutions to important methodological problems in clinical trials, including:

  1. how to properly use non-randomized/external data,
  2. how to conduct effective subgroup analysis for precision medicine and disparities research, and
  3. how to take advantange of methods insights from other fields that rely on randomized trials, such as education.

These solutions often involve novel statistical work on evidence synthesis, hierarchical models, experimental design, causal inference, the interface between Bayesian and Frequentist methods, and computation.

Alongside my methods work, I enjoy working with clinical collaborators to develop novel therapies and improve patient care in oncology and other medical specialties.

Featured Papers
Harmonized Estimation of Subgroup-Specific Treatment Effects in Randomized Trials: The Use of External Control Data
Randomized Experiments in Education, with Implications for Multilevel Causal Inference
Recent Publications and Preprints

* = co-first author, ^ = student mentee

D. E. Schwartz , Y. Ji , L. Wang (2025). Dynamic borrowing from historical controls via the synthetic prior with covariates in randomized clinical trials. Submitted.
Preprint
D. E. Schwartz , R. Saha^ , S. Ventz , L. Trippa (2025). Harmonized Estimation of Subgroup-Specific Treatment Effects in Randomized Trials: The Use of External Control Data. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B.
PDF DOI Journal Supplement Code
T. Rudra Gupta* , D. E. Schwartz* , R. Saha , P. Y. Wen , R. Rahman , L. Trippa (2025). Informative Censoring in Externally Controlled Clinical Trials: A Potential Source of Bias. ESMO Open.
DOI Journal
G. Kotecha^* , D. E. Schwartz* , S. Ventz , L. Trippa (2024). Leveraging external data in the analysis of randomized controlled trials: a comparative analysis. Submitted.
Preprint
M. Y. Polley , D. E. Schwartz , T. Karrison , J. Dignam (2024). Leveraging External Control Data in the Design and Analysis of Neuro-Oncology Trials: Pearls and Perils. Neuro-Oncology.
DOI Journal
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Resources

See the links below for some (perhaps lesser-known) professional resources and advice that have helped me grow as a statistician and scholar.