Discovering how complex traits are regulated using unsupervised learning

Barbara E. Engelhardt, an associate professor, joined the Princeton Computer Science Department in 2014 from Duke University, where she had been an assistant professor in Biostatistics and Bioinformatics and Statistical Sciences. Her research interests are Machine learning, Bayesian statistics, statistical genetics, computational biology, quantitative genetics and she received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, 2016.... Read more »

Conducting Cross Cultural Surveys Short Course

This course will provide an introduction to survey research methods for designing multinational and multicultural surveys. It begins with an overview of the field of comparative surveys. This will summarize their history and discuss some unique design features and implementation challenges inherent in their design and implementation. The second section discusses quality and risk management... Read more »

Estimation and inference on individualized treatment rule in observational data

Dr. Yingqi Zhao is the recipient of the UNC Biostatistics 2020 James. E. Grizzle Alumni Award. Dr. Zhao earned her PhD. in 2012. With the goal of improving patient outcomes, her work focuses on developing novel statistical and machine learning methods for personalized medicine, dynamic treatment regimes, disease screening and surveillance, clinical trial design, and... Read more »

Bayesian Clinical Trial Design

On Nov. 6 from 10:30 am - noon, presenter Joeseph Ibrahim, PhD, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Biostatistics, will speak on Bayesian sample size determination for a clinical trial in the presence of historical data that inform the treatment effect. He will discuss a broadly applicable, simulation-based methodology that provides a framework for calibrating the informativeness... Read more »

Faculty Lunch & Learn: Seeking Funding from Foundations and Corporations

Please join Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations Mary Beth Knight, PhD, and fellow faculty members to learn more about the process of seeking research and related funds from private sponsors; specific strategies for success; and the UNC resources available to support your efforts in this process. Discover actionable steps toward diversifying your funding portfolio... Read more »

Leadership in Public Health Alumni Panel

The Public Health Student Leadership Association presents “Leadership in Public Health”. This virtual panel will feature six Gillings School of Global Public Health alumni from diverse backgrounds. Join them for a virtual discussion and Q&A session on Nov. 11 at 5:30 p.m. Panelists include: Dr. Vaughn Upshaw, Panel Moderator, Professor and Leadership in Practice Concentration... Read more »

Joint Nonlinear Association and Prediction of Multi-view Data

Dr. Sandra Safo's research interests are in developing statistical methods and computational tools to help identify risk factors for complex diseases: multivariate statistical methods, statistical learning (including classification, discriminant analysis, association studies), data integration and feature selection methods for high dimensional data; currently integrative analysis of genomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics to help elucidate the complex... Read more »

Odum Institute Short Course — Logistic Regression

This online short course provides an introduction to logistic regression. Model specification, identification, estimation, hypothesis-testing, and interpretation of results are covered. Software to estimate these models is discussed, but not demonstrated. This is not a course on software, but rather a course on the concepts and uses of logistic regression. Registration required. For more information,... Read more »

Biostatistics Seminar: Survival Analysis using a 5-STAR Approach in Randomized Clinical Trials

Dr. Devan V. Mehrotra has, over the past 30 years, made significant contributions towards the research, development and regulatory approval of medical drugs and vaccines across a broad spectrum of therapeutic areas. He was awarded an MRL Presidential Fellowship in 2012. Dr. Mehrotra is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the University of... Read more »

Population genetics inference using segments of identity by descent

Dr. Sharon Browning's expertise is population genetics methods for large scale genetic data. In this lecture, she will discuss "Population genetics inference using segments of identity by descent." Segments of identity by descent (IBD) are long tracts of DNA shared by pairs of individuals due to inheritance from a recent common ancestor. These segments are... Read more »

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 »

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... 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 »

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 »

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 »