Laurel Alison Beckett (also published as Laurel A. Smith) is an American biostatistician specializing in Alzheimer's disease and other age-related causes of cognitive impairment. Beyond biostatistics, she has also worked as an activist for women in medicine, including the advocacy of flexible career options allowing women to balance medical careers with childrearing. She is retired as distinguished professor emerita from the UC Davis School of Medicine, where she was chief of biostatistics and directed the biostatistics core of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative.[1]