Dr. Messer directs the Moores UCSD Cancer Center Biostatistics/Bioinformatics shared resource. She and her colleagues collaborate with Cancer Center investigators on design and analysis of cancer-related studies, ranging in scale from large “omics” data sets to small Phase II trials.

Her methodological interests include more efficient Phase II trial design, issues in the analysis of longitudinal data, and asymptotic properties of resampling-based estimators. In Tobacco Control, recent work has shown that US smoking cessation rates have increased overall and particularly among young adults in California, in part due to California’s statewide tobacco control program.