Bob Currier, PhD

  • Photo of Bob Currier, PhD

Bob Currier, PhD, is currently the Chief of the Evaluation Section of the Genetic Disease Screening Program at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and has held this position for over 20 years.  Throughout his career at CDPH, Dr. Currier has worked to understand how information can be extracted from complex datasets in order to improve the public health and to learn new information that may benefit newborns impacted by rare conditions.   

At CDPH Dr. Currier statistically monitors the newborn and prenatal screening programs.  He is also responsible for developing and implementing new screening modalities. Dr. Currier was primarily in charge of developing the algorithm for the interpretation of results from tandem mass spectrometry for newborn screening.  He has written, “It was a complicated statistical task to balance the needs of high sensitivity with high specificity.”  His contribution to collaborative efforts to distinguish true positives from false positives has led to several publications. 

Dr. Currier graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a BS in mathematics and the University of Illinois with an MS and PhD in mathematics.  He then went on to become an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Smith College before performing NIH postdoctoral research in AIDS at UCLA.  His next step was to join the Genetic Disease Screening Branch of the CDPH where we are lucky to find him today.  Dr. Currier has a multitude of publications and presentations under his belt. He serves on the steering committee of the NBSTRN as well as contributing to several research grants related to newborn screening.

The NBSTRN is very pleased to honor such a dedicated researcher and we are excited to see the future contributions that Dr. Currier will make to the newborn screening research community!

 

Sources:

Currier, Robert J., Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Robert J. Currier, NIH Biographical Sketch

Both provided courtesy of Dr. Currier

 

Researcher Name and Credentials: 
Bob Currier, PhD