Alexa S. Beiser, PhD

Professor, Boston University School of Public Health

Biography

Alexa Beiser has been on the faculty at Boston University School of Public Health since 1985, engaged in teaching and collaborative public health research; she co-developed the doctoral program in biostatistics; co-directed the biostatistics program from 2000-2004, and served as Associate Chair for Education from 2015-2018. She formerly taught and coordinated the sections of Introduction to Statistical Computing. For more than twenty-five years, Dr. Beiser has served as the lead biostatistician for the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) neurology group, examining risk factors and prevalence and incidence of clinical and sub-clinical neurological outcomes including MRI and PET measures of brain structure, cognitive performance, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and epilepsy. Dr. Beiser currently leads the FHS neurology group data management team, responsible for surveillance and tracking of incident dementia, for supervision of recruitment of participants for various grant-funded studies, and for management of data collected at FHS as well as those measured or processed at other institutions (e.g., brain MRI or PET scans); and the FHS neurology group biostatistics team of six biostatisticians. Decades of examining risk factors for neurological diseases has naturally led to studying factors associated with accelerated brain aging. Dr. Beiser has coauthored FHS publications relating risk factors including midlife vascular factors, plasma homocysteine, plasma leptin levels, cardiac index, red blood cell omega-3 fatty acids, metabolic dysregulation, visceral fat, air pollution; serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor; and insulin-like growth factor 1, to measures of brain aging. Dr. Beiser also has made use of the richness of the multigenerational Framingham data to relate documented parental dementia and stroke to offspring stroke, cognitive performance, and MRI measures of brain structure. In investigations of clinical neurological endpoints, she has applied competing risk analyses and has also been able to investigate temporal trends in prevalent and incident neurological disease due to the availability of event surveillance over many decades. In all these studies, Dr. Beiser plays a key role in project conceptualization, is responsible for supervision of statistical data management, analysis, and interpretation of results, and contributes to manuscript preparation and critical review.

Publications

  • Published 5/1/2026

    Young VM, Wiedner C, Baril AA, Pase MP, Ruiz A, Salardini A, Frei CR, Kautz T, Bernal R, Yiallourou S, Cribb L, Beiser A, Teixeira AL, Himali JJ, Seshadri S. Non-linear associations between sleep duration and plasma p-tau181 in the Framingham Heart Study. Alzheimers Dement. 2026 May; 22(5):e71499. PMID: 42156936.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 4/24/2026

    Ekenze O, Scott M, Himali D, Lioutas VA, Seshadri S, Howard VJ, Fornage M, Aparicio HJ, Beiser AS, Romero JR. Sex-specific trends in incident stroke: The Framingham Heart Study. medRxiv. 2026 Apr 24. PMID: 42078382.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 4/23/2026

    Peloso GM, Wang D, Abbruzzese SM, Bis JC, Choi SH, Beiser A, Bressler J, Dupuis J, Fohner AE, Ghanbari M, Gibbs RA, Heard-Costa N, Ikram MA, Lacaze P, Le Grand Q, Lopez OL, Mosley TH, Riaz M, Soumaré A, Yaqub A, Boerwinkle E, Psaty BM, Fornage M, Seshadri S, DeStefano AL. Whole genome sequencing analysis of over 3500 individuals dementia-free over 85 years old. J Alzheimers Dis. 2026 Apr 23; 13872877261444302. PMID: 42024100.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 4/2/2026

    Giorgio K, Stephen JJ, Mansolf M, Peterson EA, Gross AL, Briceño EM, Levine DA, Helmer C, Debette S, Soumaré A, Ikram MA, Wolters FJ, Seshadri S, Satizabal CL, Himali JJ, Launer LJ, Li D, Mbangdadji D, Lloyd-Jones DM, Sorond FA, Zhao L, Lopez OL, Judd SE, Hughes TM, Guðnason V, Aiello AE, Fohner A, Singh-Manoux A, Sabayan B, Pankow JS, de Vries PS, Yaffe K, Beiser A, Dehghan A, Zmora R, Scholtens D, Lutsey PL, Allen NB, MacLehose R, Sedaghat S. Risk factors for early-onset and late-onset dementia: a prospective cohort study. Lancet Healthy Longev. 2026 Mar; 7(3):100831. PMID: 41936382.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 4/1/2026

    Saravanan A, Giorgio K, Lakomski N, Schneider ALC, Olson-Bullis BA, Sabayan B, Pankow JS, de Vries PS, Yaffe K, Beiser A, Dehghan A, Peterson EA, Zmora R, Stephen JJ, Scholtens D, Mansolf M, Launer LJ, MacLehose RF, Lutsey PL, Allen NB, Sedaghat S. Traumatic brain injury and risk of early-onset dementia: A population-based cohort study. Alzheimers Dement. 2026 Apr; 22(4):e71387. PMID: 41981712.

    Read at: PubMed

View All 463 Publications:   View Full Profile in BUMC

Other Positions

  • Professor, Neurology
    Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
  • Investigator
    Framingham Heart Study

Websites

Education

  • Boston University, PhD
  • University of California, San Diego, MA
  • University of California, Santa Cruz, BA

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