Dr. Allen collaborates in research in applied statistics including clinical and basic science, and teaches multivariate statistics, analytics & data visualization, and meta-analysis at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Dr. Allen has founded and held executive positions in several healthcare and biotechnology companies including founding StatSystems, a medical device company, and ARIAD Pharmaceuticals. She serves on the scientific advisory boards of Catalyst at UCSF and several biotechnology and fintech start-ups.

Dr. Allen earned her doctorate in Statistics from Cornell University, and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. At UCSF she has been named Consultant of the Year for multiple years. With Dr. Jeff Seaman, Babson Survey Research Group (now Bay View Analytics) received the Alfred P. Sloan Director’s Award for outstanding research in online education. In 2020, her research on discrimination by real estate agents, in collaboration with NY Newsday, received a Peabody Award, and the Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative journalism.