Dr. Perera is a biostatistician with interests in aging, clinical trials, time series analysis, item response theory, and classification and regression trees. His work has involved estimating criteria for clinically meaningful change in physical performance measures of the elderly, examining their association with future outcomes using large data sets, and using item response theory to analyze rating scales used in elderly populations. Dr. Perera co-leads the Data Management, Analysis and Informatics Core of our Pepper Center, in addition to serving as lead statistician in multiple funded NIH, AHRQ and VA grants within and outside of the Division.
- BS, Computer Science, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 1992
- MS, Mathematics, Kansas State University, 1994
- MS, Statistics, Kansas State University, 1996
- PhD, Statistics, Kansas State University, 2000
Education & Training
Perera S, Zhang X, Patterson CG, Boudreau RM. Serial gait speed measurements over time and dynamic survival prediction in older adults. Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging. 2024; 28(9): 100330
Perera S, Nadkarni NK, Wert D, VanSwearingen J, Brach JS. Intraclass correlation coefficients for cluster randomized trials in community-dwelling older adults. Journal of Aging and Health. 2020; 32: 252-258.
Perera S, VanSwearingen J, Shuman V, Brach JS. Assessing gait efficacy in older adults: an analysis using item response theory. Gait & Posture. 2020; 77(3): 118-124.
Perera S, Patel KV, Rosano C, Chandler JM, Newman A, Cauley J, Guralnik J, Ferrucci L, Studenski S. Gait Speed Predicts Incident Disability: A Pooled Analysis. Journal of Gerontology-Series A: Biological Sciences & Medical Sciences. 2016; 71: 63-71.
Studenski S, Perera S, Patel K. Gait Speed and Survival in Older Adults. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2011; 305: 50-58.
Perera S, Studenski SA, Newman AB, Simonsick EM, Harris T, Schwartz A, Visser M. Are Estimates of Meaningful Decline in Mobility Performance Consistent among Clinically Important Subgroups?. Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences. 2014; 69A: 1260-1268.
Perera S. Normal theory and bootstrap confidence interval estimation for assessing diagnostic performance gain when combining two diagnostic tests. Communications in Statistics-Series B: Simulation and Computation. 2008; 37: 2076-2088.
Perera S. Maximum quasi-likelihood estimation for the NEAR(2) model. Journal of Time Series Analysis. 2004; 25: 723-732.
Perera S. Approximate Bayes estimation of parameters of the NEAR(2) model. Far East Journal of Theoretical Statistics. 2004; 14: 203-213.
Perera S. Maximum quasilikelihood estimation for a simplified NEAR(1) model. Statistics & Probability Letters. 2002; 58: 147-155.
- Leonard and Dorellen Haas Scholarship, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 1990
- Outstanding Senior Award, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 1992
- Honorable Mention, Clinical Medicine Research Award, Gerontological Society of America, 2005
- Highly Cited Researcher Recognition, Thomson Reuters (www.highlycited.com), 2014
- Fellow, Gerontological Society of America, 2018
