Sensitivity Analysis in Observational Research: Introducing the E-Value

Dr. Tyler VanderWeele holds degrees from the University of Oxford, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University in mathematics, philosophy, theology, finance, and biostatistics. His research is focused on distinguishing between association and causation in the biomedical and social sciences, and, more recently, on measurement theory and synthesizing ideas from causal inference and analytic philosophy into... Read more »

Data-Adaptive Regression Modeling in High Dimensions

Dr. Ashley Petersen's research focuses on developing methods in the area of statistical learning, and in building flexible and interpretable data-adaptive models that are useful in modern settings with large numbers of covariates. She develops methods for the analysis of calcium imaging data. As a member of the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core of the Masonic... Read more »

Spring PHield Trip to RTI

Explore public health in action! Join the virtual PHield trip with RTI International on Feb. 18 from 1-3:00 p.m. The event will feature a keynote on mobilizing global public health research during a pandemic, a discussion regarding the intersection of public health, mental health, and racial equity, and breakout rooms where you can learn about... Read more »

Optimal Dynamic Treatment Rule Estimation and Evaluation with Application to Criminal Justice Interventions in the United States

Dr. Lina Montoya's doctorate was funded by an F31 NIH grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Her project leveraged data from a Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trial (SMART) called Adaptive Strategies for Preventing and Treating Lapses of Retention in HIV Care (ADAPT-R; PIs: Drs. Petersen and Geng) to estimate individualized treatment... Read more »

It is Never too Early to Think About Statistical Leadership

Dr. Richard Zink spent 17 years in and around medical product development at a real-world data company (Target RWE) where he led data management and statistics in the analysis and reporting of data derived from electronic medical records; a software company (SAS Institute) where he developed and supported platforms to analyze and visualize safety and... Read more »

Statistical methods for single-cell and spatial RNA-seq

Dr. Christina Kendziorski's research concerns statistical methods and software for computational biology and genomics. Her group develops statistical methods and software for the analysis of data from high-throughput genomics experiments and have considerable expertise in the experimental design and analysis of bulk RNA-seq studies and in single-cell RNA-seq. The group also uses high-throughput data from... Read more »

Statistical analysis of spatial expression pattern for spatially resolved transcriptomic studies

Dr. Xiang Zhou is a John G. Searle Assistant Professor of biostatistics who received his M.S. in statistics and PhD in neurobiology from Duke University (2010). His research focuses on developing statistical methods and computational tools for genetic and genomic studies. These studies often involve large-scale and high-dimensional data; examples include genome-wide association studies and... Read more »

Identifying effector genes of human GWAS variants by INFIMA

Dr. Sunduz Keles will give a biostatistics talk titled "Identifying effector genes of human GWAS variants by INFIMA". The Keles Research Group is interested in statistical and computational genomics and develops statistical and computational data science methods for problems in high-dimensional genomic and biomedical data. The group will exploit, leverage and integrate high-throughput functional, genomic,... Read more »

National Public Health Week: Building Bridges to Better Health

During the first full week of April each year, APHA brings together communities across the United States to observe National Public Health Week as a time to recognize the contributions of public health and highlight issues that are important to improving our nation. APHA creates new NPHW materials each year that can be used during... Read more »

Towards a unified methodology of study design and statistical analysis for causal inference in implementation science

Dr. Donna Spiegelman has a joint doctorate in biostatistics and epidemiology and her research is motivated by problems that arise in epidemiology and require biostatistical settlement; in part a focus on troubleshooting methods for study design and data analysis to reduce bias in estimation and inference due to measurement error or misclassification in the exposure... Read more »

Defining and addressing dependent observation schemes in life history studies

Dr. Richard Cook's research interests include the development and application of statistical methods for public health research. Specific areas of interest include the analysis of life history data, longitudinal data analysis, statistical methods for incomplete data, sequential methods, multivariate analysis, clinical trial design, and the assessment of diagnostic tests. Dr. Cook's Seminar talk title is:... Read more »

Small Area Estimation in Low-and Middle-Income Countries

Dr. Jonathan Wakefield worked internationally and at University of Washington since 1999 in the Departments of Statistics and Biostatistics; he was Chair of the Dept. of Statistics from 2009-2011. His current work is on methods for modeling health and demographic outcomes in a low- and medium-income (LMIC) context and he is collaborating with the United... Read more »

Robust testing for differential abundance in microbiome data

Please note the changed time of day for this Seminar: 2-3 pm. The Biostatistics Department Awards Day will commence directly after the seminar. Dr. Yijuan Hu is the 2020 J.E Grizzle Distinguished Alumni Awardee. The Department of Biostatistics is excited to welcome back Dr. Hu! She obtained her doctoral degree from UNC in biostatistics in... Read more »