Avital Cnaan MS, PhD

Avital earned her Ph.D. in Statistics at Carnegie-Mellon University. She has specialized in clinical research and particularly in multi-center clinical trials. She is the Director of the Coordinating Center of the Cooperative International Neuromuscular Research Group (CINRG), a network of more than 20 clinical sites focusing on improving the quality of life of patients with neuromuscular diseases and their families via research. She has also directed clinical trials coordinating centers in epilepsy, premature infants, and other diseases.

Prior to joining Children’s National Medical Center, she was at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania. As a statistician, her interests are in survival analysis, longitudinal data analysis methods, and issues in the design and analysis of clinical trials, such as compliance and side effects, or the diverse roles of data and safety monitoring committees. She is an author of more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.