Contact
Documents
Areas of Service
Ronald G. Marks, Ph.D.
Dr. Ronald G. Marks is an Associate Consultant for Info Tech. He recently completed a 30-year career as professor of Biostatistics at the University of Florida. He served as director of the Division of Biostatistics for 18 of his 30 years on the faculty, and was involved in biomedical research and teaching throughout his career.
Dr. Marks also taught throughout his academic career. He regularly taught a course on research design and one on statistical analysis methods to graduate students in the biomedical and agricultural colleges. He developed a course on evidence-based medicine for the physicians’ assistant program in the University of Florida College of Medicine. That course focused on teaching medical professionals how to read and interpret the published scientific literature on risk factors as the cause of specific diseases or conditions. In 2003, Dr. Marks received an Exemplary Teacher award for his teaching efforts.
He continues to serve on grant review committees for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney (NIDDK) Diseases and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR).
He has served on numerous Data Safety and Monitoring Boards (DSMB) for the National Institutes of Health and commercial companies. He currently serves on a DSMB for NIDCR and is the Chair of a DSMB for a major pharmaceutical company conducting global clinical trials on a new product under development.
Dr. Marks has served as a consultant to pharmaceutical and biotech companies throughout his career, providing advice on study design, analysis, and reporting results. He has also served as an expert witness for a number of law firms and commercial companies primarily in the areas of product liability, advertising claims, and environmental issues. Dr. Marks has been court-qualified as an expert in biostatistics and epidemiology.
During the course of his academic career, Dr. Marks participated in the design, conduct, analysis, and interpretation of numerous large-scale studies. He was the principal investigator for the Data Coordinating Center for the largest clinical trial ever conducted at the University of Florida - a 22,000 patient Phase IV hypertension clinical trial conducted over five years at 862 primary care physician sites in 14 countries. He also served as the primary biostatistical consultant in a geriatric epidemiology study of the elderly in Florida, following over 5,000 subjects longitudinally for more than ten years. This study led to the publication of over 60 scientific articles. In addition, Dr. Marks provided biostatistical support for large-scale clinical trials and observational studies in dental and ophthalmic research areas.
Dr. Marks’s experience with hands-on field research and clinical trials, combined with his academic understanding of patterns and trends in data, allows him to understand the presentation and interpretation of published scientific findings from a unique perspective as someone who was involved in evaluating research results and presenting them through his own scientific findings. He is able to discuss, decipher, and explain complex medical and environmental findings with simple terminology and clear graphical representations because of his extensive teaching background in which he taught scientific principles to a wide range of students, many with no previous background in statistical design and analysis methods.
Dr. Marks holds a Bachelor of Education in Mathematics from Millersville State College in Pennsylvania, and a Master of Science and a Doctorate in Statistics from the University of Florida.
- Served on numerous Data Safety and Monitoring Boards for the National Institutes of Health and commercial companies
- Served as the Director of the Division of Biostatistics at the University of Florida
- Led several large-scale research studies, included the largest clinical trial ever conducted at the University of Florida
- Serves as a consultant for pharmaceutical and biotech companies
- Developed a course on evidence-based medicine