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Faculty

Methodologic and collaborative interests of our graduate research advisors are shown below. PhD applicants considering our program may want to review our process for selecting a dissertation advisor.

Professors

Changyong FengChangyong Feng, PhD

University of Rochester

Interests

Multivariate survival analysis; empirical processes theory; longitudinal data analysis; statistical methods in epidemiology and clinical trials.   Full Profile

Brent A. Johnson, Ph.D.Brent Johnson, PhD

North Carolina State University

Interests

Semi-parametric methods for missing data problems with specific applications to causal inference, survival and longitudinal data; dynamic treatment regimes in therapeutic HIV and AIDS studies, infusion trials, neurological and behavioral disorders; pattern analysis in HIV prevention; statistical methods for epidemiology. Full Profile of Brent Johnson, PhD

Mike McDermottMichael McDermott, PhD

Department Associate Chair; ASA Fellow
University of Rochester

Interests

Order-restricted inference; receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and surfaces; methods for combining p-values; meta-analysis; missing data problems; clinical trials methodology; applications in neurological disease. Full Profile of Michael McDermott, PhD

David OakesDavid Oakes, PhD

ASA Fellow; IMS Fellow
London University

Interests

Survival analysis, including multivariate survival data and frailty models; semiparametric inference; clinical trials; applications in environmental medicine and neurological disease.  Full Profile of David Oakes, PhD

Derick PetersonDerick Peterson, PhD

University of California, Berkeley

Interests

Construction of prognostic gene expression profiles from high-dimensional transcriptomic data; model selection; nonparametric estimation and inference; data-driven smoothing methods; analysis of censored survival data; applications in cancer, cardiology, and infectious respiratory diseases. Full Profile of Derick Peterson, PhD

Xing QiuXing Qiu, PhD

University of Rochester

Interests

High-dimensional Omics data pre-processing, analyses, modeling, and integration; diffusion tensor imaging analysis; dynamic network analysis based on ordinary differential equations and state-space model; differential geometry and its applications to hypothesis testing procedures based on correlation/covariance. Full Profile of Xing Qiu, PhD

Robert Strawderman, ScD, Harvard University (Department Chair)Robert Strawderman, ScD

Department Chair; ASA Fellow; IMS Fellow
Harvard University

Interests

Statistical methods for point process data (e.g., survival analysis, recurrent events), with application to risk and outcome prediction in medicine, epidemiology and public health; statistical learning methods; dynamic treatment regimes and causal inference; asymptotics (theory and approximation); statistical computing. Full Profile of Robert Strawderman, ScD

Sally ThurstonSally Thurston, PhD

Department Diversity and Inclusion Officer; ASA Fellow
Harvard University

Interests

Bayesian inference; modeling multiple outcomes; correction for measurement error bias; informative prior specification; latent variable models; hierarchical models; models for multiple correlated exposures; environmental health applications. Full Profile

Abdus WahedAbdus Wahed, PhD

Department Associate Chair; ASA Fellow
North Carolina State University

Interests

Personalized medicine; development of statistical methods for testing dynamic treatment regimes (adaptive treatment strategies) from Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trials (SMARTs); multivariate ordinal longitudinal data analysis; survival analysis; causal inference; semiparametric inference. Full Profile

of Matthew McCall, PhD

of Sally Thurston, PhD

Tong Tong WuTongtong Wu, PhD

M.A. Statistics Program Director
M.S. Biostatistics Program Director

University of California, Los Angeles

Interests

High-dimensional data analysis; survival analysis; machine learning; computational statistics; computational biology and statistical genetics; longitudinal data analysis.  Full Profile

Associate Professors

of Anthony Almudevar, P

Christopher BeckChristopher Beck, PhD

University of Rochester

Interests

Inference concerning receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and surfaces; change-point problems; clinical trials; applications in orthopedics and neurological disease.  Full Profile

 

Ashkan ErtefaieAshkan Ertefaie, PhD

McGill University

Interests

Causal inference; dynamic treatment regimes; sequential multiple assignment randomized trials; comparative effectiveness studies using electronic health records; instrumental variable analyses; high-dimensional data analysis; post selection inference; survival analysis.  Full Profile

of Christopher Beck, PhD

of Changyong Feng, PhTanzy LoveTanzy Love, PhD

Iowa State University

Interests

Clustering and latent variable models; mixed membership models and model choice; normalization and preprocessing issues relating to gene expression and proteomics data; Bayesian models for QTLs and growth curves; hierarchical Bayesian models for gene expression data; scalable parallel model-based clustering. Full Profile of Tanzy Love, PhD

Matthew McCallMatthew McCall, PhD

Ph.D. Program Director
Johns Hopkins University

Interests

Statistical genomics; bioinformatics; systems biology; biomedical data science; statistical methods for miRNA-seq data; cancer gene regulatory network estimation; adjusting for cellular composition on tissue-level gene expression; preprocessing and analysis of microglia imaging data. Full Profile of Tongtong Wu, PhD

Assistant Professors

faculty profileSeong-Hwan Jun, PhD

University of British Columbia

Interests

Bayesian models and computation; probabilistic machine learning; graphical models; statistical inference for combinatorial problems; statistical methods for analysis of single cell transcriptomics data; multi-omics data integration; cancer genomics; cancer-immune interaction; phylogenetics. Full Profile

 

 of Ashkan Ertefaie, of Andrew McDavid, PhDSamuel Norman-HaignereSamuel Norman-Haignere, PhD

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Interests

Component modeling of neural responses; neural encoding models; brain organization; speech and music perception; sound synthesis; deep learning; functional MRI; human intracranial electrophysiology; temporal integration. Full Profile

 of Ashkan Ertefaie, P

of Andrew McDavid, PhD

Michael SohnMichael Sohn, PhD

University of Arizona

Interests

High-dimensional data analysis; compositional data analysis; statistical machine learning; causal mediation analysis; genomics and metagenomics. Full Profile

of Michael Sohn, PhD

 

Additional Department Faculty

For a full listing of faculty appointments in the Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, please visit our department website.

Faculty Collaborations and Medical Research

Faculty are currently involved in wide-ranging collaborative activity with the Environmental Health Sciences Center, the Cancer Center, the Center for Neurotherapeutics Discovery, the Center for Health and Technology, the Center for Oral Biology, the Clinical Cardiovascular Research Center, and the School of Nursing. Faculty also work closely with the Departments of Medicine, Neurology, Public Health Sciences, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Emergency Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Ophthalmology, Dentistry, and Biomedical Genetics. The department houses Biostatistics Centers for the Parkinson’s Study Group, Huntington’s Study Group, and Muscle Study Group and is responsible for the statistical analysis of many recent and ongoing multicenter clinical trials of new treatments for those diseases.

Department faculty have played major roles in important breakthroughs in medical research at Rochester. Examples include:

  • the better understanding of the role of calcium channel blockers in treating patients who have had a heart attack
  • demonstration of both the clinical effectiveness and the cost effectiveness of implantable defibrillators in reducing mortality among certain heart disease patients
  • demonstration of the effectiveness of deprenyl in slowing onset of disability in early Parkinson’s disease
  • demonstration of the benefit of surfactant therapy for respiratory distress syndrome in premature infants
  • demonstration of the benefits and risks of early surgical therapy for drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy 
  • an ongoing epidemiologic study of the assessment of the effects of low levels of dietary mercury intake on childhood development. 

 

 

of Zhengwu Zhang, PhD