Sumithra J. Mandrekar, Ph.D., is the lead faculty statistician for lung cancer research at Mayo Clinic. She is also the program director, group statistician and Mayo Clinic principal investigator for the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology — also called Alliance — and the Alliance Foundation Trials. As such, she has the overall scientific, administrative and fiscal responsibility for all statistics and data management for Alliance's trials and research. Dr. Mandrekar also is the lead faculty statistician for Alliance's experimental and rare tumors committee.

Dr. Mandrekar's research interests are in the areas of design, conduct and analysis of cancer clinical trials with a focus on trial implementation and methodology. She has designed and coordinated phase 1, 2 and 3 clinical trials for over 20 years, including trials that have led to regulatory approval of agents, and several research grants in the field of oncology.