Edgar Simard
Adjunct Asst Professor
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Adjunct or Visiting, Epidemiology

Dr. Simard is an epidemiologist with diverse experience across multiple disciplines. He is co-trained as a cancer epidemiologist and as a medical device and pharmaco-epidemiologist. At Rollins he lectures and mentors students on such topics as drug and device safety and effectiveness as well as cancer epidemiology, specifically cancers attributable to infectious agents.
In his primary role at Medtronic he leads the Evidence Optimization (EO) Center of Expertise in the Clinical Research, Medical Science and Regulatory Affairs function. This includes managing of team of internal experts who advise on global clinical evidence strategies, clinical trial design (e.g., two-arm, single arm, optimization of I/E criteria, end-point selection, and PROs including Real-World Evidence (RWE), types of studies), the application of decentralized trial (DCT) approaches, as well as lead the Medtronic Patient Data Strategy across 20 operating units and corporate business functions.
Areas of Interest
- Cancer Prevention
- Clinical Trials
- Data Science
- Disease Surveillance
- Epidemiology
- Health Disparities
- Health Services Research
- HIV/AIDS Prevention
- HPV-Related Diseases
- Non-communicable Diseases
- Population Sciences
- Surveillance
- Survival Analysis
Education
- BS 1999, Southern Connecticut State University
- MPH 2004, Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health
- PhD 2010, Rutgers University School of Public Health
- Post-Doc 2011, Columbia University
- Pre-Doc 2009, National Cancer Institute
Affiliations & Activities
Dr. Simard is an active member of the medical device groups of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology and the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research. He is also a collaborator with the FDA NEST and SENTINEL programs.