Dr. Diener-West’s main research interests over the past fifteen years have been in the design, conduct, and analysis of clinical trials in oncology and ophthalmology. Since 1986, Dr. Diener-West has been the Study Statistician and Deputy Director of the Coordinating Center for the Collaborative Ocular Melanoma Study (COMS), a set of long-term multicenter clinical trials sponsored by the National Eye Institute and conducted at 43 clinical centers to investigate the effectiveness of different radiation treatments on prolonging survival of patients with choroidal melanoma.

Her areas of interest have included risk factors for mortality and predictors of growth of small melanoma, agreement among multiple raters, and correlation of different methods of measuring tumor dimensions. Other research interests include treatment trials for cystic fibrosis and a longitudinal assessment of the relationship between sleep disorders and heart disease in the Sleep Heart Health Study.