Our Department of Biostatistics is recognized as a worldwide leader in research and practice. Members of our faculty are interested both in the development of statistical methodology and application of statistics in applied research.
Our Recent News
In a peer-reviewed study on the real-world effectiveness of updated bivalent mRNA vaccines, researchers at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health found that bivalent COVID-19 boosters provide effective protection from hospitalization and death, even against the most recent omicron subvariants. Danyu Lin, PhD, Dennis Gillings Distinguished Professor of Biostatistics, served as lead author in the study, which was published on April 12 in The New England Journal of Medicine. Read the full article.
About Us
Our offices are located on the third floor of McGavran-Greenberg Hall.
Assistant to Chair
Ty Baker: bakerts@ad.unc.edu
Mailing Address
Department of Biostatistics
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health
135 Dauer Drive
3101 McGavran-Greenberg Hall, CB #7420
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7420
At the Gillings School, diversity and inclusion mean we welcome, value and learn from individual differences and perspectives. By cultivating inclusion within the School, we better prepare our students, faculty and staff for the diverse world that awaits them. A globally-interconnected world needs culturally competent people to serve as its leaders. Diversity and inclusion are assets that contribute to our excellence.
The Department of Biostatistics is a world leader in statistical research and statistical practice for the purposes of improving the public’s health, improving biostatistical education, and advancing the biostatistics profession.
Our mission is to forge dramatic advances in health science research that benefit human health in North Carolina, the U.S. and globally through the development of profound and paradigm-shifting innovations in biostatistical methodology and the thoughtful implementation of biostatistical practice to solve public health problems. We bring about positive, sustainable changes in health by:
- Supporting excellence in biostatistical practice by conducting theory and methods research of clear relevance to practice;
- Promoting sound application of new and existing statistical methods;
- Improving biostatistical education at the undergraduate and graduate levels;
- Working with undergraduate colleges to promote biostatistics as a discipline for graduate studies and a professional career;
- Anticipating and meeting the learning needs of our students;
- Using the tools of our discipline to enhance human welfare through collaboration in research with colleagues in the biological and health sciences; and
- Seeking opportunities to advance the biostatistics profession.
In 1949, Gertrude Cox, MS, helped establish the Department of Biostatistics in the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Public Health, selecting her former student, Bernard Greenberg, PhD, to lead it. Dr. Greenberg pioneered efforts to establish the practice of cooperative multicenter trials, changing the course of practice for the evaluation of new drugs.
That tradition of statistical innovation continues in a program led by Lisa LaVange, PhD, professor and chair of biostatistics, who also serves as the director of UNC’s Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center.
Today, the biostatistics department is the statistical home for many studies in the UNC schools of medicine and nursing, and provides statistical support for UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the N.C. Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute (NC TraCS).
Read more about our history. (PDF)
Message from the Chair
Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center (CSCC)
Many of our faculty and students work at the Department’s CSCC, which has a 50 plus year distinguished history as a pioneer in clinical data management, implementing remote data entry on a national project in 1986 (the first NIH coordinating center to do so), followed by a web-based data management system in 2001 and updated since to permit real-time reporting, tracking, editing, and querying of data. CSCC projects span the clinical areas of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, chronic lung disease, nutrition and obesity, periodontal disease, kidney disease, mental health and child health. Visit our CSCC website.
