Research interests
Background:
Samuel Sahpiro graduated in medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1956, and specialized in internal medicine and cardiology. In the early 1960's he became concerned with the efficacy and safety of medications commonly used at the time, and realized that many qestions could only be be evaluated using edpidemiologic methods. In 1967, when he emigrated to the United States, and switiched his focus to epidemiology. Initially he worked with the Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program, Boston University, in developing appropriate methods to evaluate drug safety.
In 1974, Shapiro and Dennis Slone founded the Drug Epidemiology Unit, renamed, after Slone's death in 1980, the Slone Epidemiology Unit (SEU). He and Slone developed case-control methods, in particular, as a surveillance tool in the assessment of drug safety. Over the years the SEU made comprehensive contributions in that field. The SEU also expanded its activities into other fields, such as cancer epidemiology.
In recent years Shapiro has also made theoretical contributions to epidemiologic methods. In 1999 he stepped down as head of the SEU, and is now a Visiting Professor in the department of epidemiology at Columbia.
