Dr. Dylan Spicker is an assistant professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Spicker completed their PhD (2022) and Master of Mathematics (2018) at the University of Waterloo in Statistics. Following their graduate studies, they held a postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University and an assistant professorship at the University of New Brunswick.
As a biostatistician, Dr. Spicker develops methodologies that confront the complexities of real-world data. Their work focuses on identifying and closing "theory-practice gaps" in public health, epidemiology, and medicine more broadly. They work to understand why cutting-edge statistical techniques are underused in substantive research, to adapt these methods to overcome these methodological shortcomings, and to operationalize these techniques alongside substantive researchers across a variety of domains. Their work spans causal inference, precision medicine, and medical AI, among other areas, with a focus on addressing challenges such as missing data, measurement error, self-reported information, and privacy concerns. Their methodological work has been largely informed by nutritional epidemiology and mental health.