Department of Biostatistics at Columbia University

08/02/2024

Part 1 of our Columbia Biostats Summer: SIBDS!

The Summer Institute in Biostatistics and Data Science at Columbia (SIBDS@Columbia) is one our pipeline programs where over seven weeks, undergraduates from across the country to hone their skills in Data Science as they dive into the world of Biostatistics. This year we were proud to welcome 15 students to campus and watch them grow and explore in and around Columbia. Slide through for a few snapshots of their summer!

Learn more at https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/academics/non-degree-special-programs/professional-non-degree-programs/summer-institute-training-biostatistics-data-science-columbia

08/01/2024

Heading to JSM this upcoming weekend? Be sure to mark your calendar on August 6th from 6pm-8pm for the Columbia University joint reception for Statistics and Biostatistics Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni! We'll be in Room H-Willamette 8 in the Hyatt Regency Portland. Hope to see you there!

07/15/2024

On Friday, July 19th at 1pm, Yinjun (Abby) Zhao will present her dissertation research, “Multi-level Latent Variable Models for Integrating Multiple Phenotypes for Mental Disorders”. Come to ARB 657 to see Abby present the culmination of her research and her PhD experience!

07/10/2024

Congratulations to Dr. Zhezhen Jin for their paper, "A Step-Wise Multiple Testing for Linear Regression Models with Application to the Study of Resting Energy Expenditure", which won a Best Paper Award for the Statistics in Biosciences Journal.

Initiating its annual Best Paper Awards in 2021, Statistics in Biosciences (SIBS) presents two awards each year to the best papers published in SIBS in the previous year.

You can read the paper here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12561-022-09355-5

06/03/2024

Today we welcomed our 2024 BEST & SIBDS students to campus to being their programs. Over the summer they'll take courses in biostatistics and public health, conduct research projects with faculty mentors, and get to experience a summer at Columbia in New York City. Welcome students to the start of a great summer!

05/31/2024

Dr. Linda Valeri was recently featured in a Harvard Catalyst Article, "Disentangling Complex Medical Outcomes". She talked about the trajectory of her work, its potential benefits to society, and her goals for her current R01 award. Read the full article at the link below!

Topics: Five Questions, Pilot Funding Disentangling Complex Medical Outcomes Five Questions with biostatistician Linda Valeri on the value of pilot funding eight years later. By Brenda Patoine May 28, 2024 Related stories: Right Place, Right Time: Taking on COVID Loss of Smell Preventing Lung Diseas...

05/23/2024

Did you know that this year Columbia Biostatistics was ranked the #6 Biostatistics program among Public Health Schools by the 2024 U.S. News Report? �We are proud as a department to always look for improvements in our educational programming and research, whether that’s bringing in more coursework on AI and machine learning or creating interdisciplinary conferences to address the future of public health.

We are so thankful to all of our wonderful students, faculty, and staff who made this possible. Now it’s time to keep advancing in our work!

05/23/2024

Congratulations to Dr. Jeff Goldsmith on his 2024 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching!

The Presidential Awards for Outstanding Teaching were established in 1996 to honor excellence in teaching at the University. 5 awards are conferred to faculty and 3 awards are conferred to graduate student instructors each year. The Columbia community is invited to submit nominations, and these are reviewed by selection committees comprised of both faculty and students, including prior winners. From this pool of hundreds of nominations, a select group of finalists are chosen. Their departments are asked to prepare dossiers that illustrate their commitment to promoting intellectual development, innovation in pedagogy and design, commitment to inclusivity and diversity in the classroom, and a dedication and enthusiasm for teaching.

Jeff is a wonderful person, teacher, and colleague we are grateful to have in our department, and we are very happy to congratulate him on this well-earned recognition!

05/21/2024

Congratulations to our graduates! You leave as the Class of 2024 with the skills, expertise, and experience to change the face of public health through data. You’ve worked hard for this goal, already contributing to research as you honed your vision of a better future. We are so proud of all our students, and look forward to seeing what you do. Here’s to countless possibilities!

05/21/2024

On Thursday, Madison Stoms will present her dissertation research, "Innovations in Functional Data Analysis with Applications in Women's Health and Neuroscience". Come to HSC LL107 at 3:30pm on Thursday, May 23rd to see Madison's impactful work as a PhD student in the Biostatistics department!

05/17/2024

On Monday, Charlotte Fowler will present her dissertation research, "Causal inference and time series methods for N-of-1 mobile health studies with missing data". Come to ARB 657 at 2pm on Monday, May 20th to see the amazing research she's completed as a PhD student of the Biostatistics department!

05/14/2024

Congratulations to our student awardees of 2024 for their fantastic work!

Chair's Award for Outstanding Master's Student: Ziqing Wang, Charles Chen, Zekai Jin
Sanford Bolton-John Fertig Award: Jia Guo, PhD '24
Joseph L Fleiss Award: Rebecca Silva, PhD '24
Teaching Assistant Awards: Zexi Cai (Doctoral Level), Tvisha Devavarapu (Masters Level)

05/10/2024

On Monday, Melanie Mayer will present her dissertation research, "Modeling and causal inference methods for estimating and transporting an environmental mixture's effect". Come to HSC LL 209 A/B at 1pm on Monday, May 13th to see the amazing research she's completed as a PhD student of the Biostatistics department!

05/08/2024

Tomorrow is our final Levin Lecture of the semester! Dr. Karen Bandeen-Roch of John Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health will present her research on, "Novel Approaches for Characterizing Physical Resilience in Older Adults: The Study of Physical Resilience and Aging" at 11:45 in the ARB 8th floor auditorium. Come end the semester with us by learning!

05/08/2024

Today is the FINAL T-Time of the semester! Come by the 6th floor lobby from 4-5pm for an assortment of fresh food and snacks to celebrate the end of semester and coming of summer! All Biostatistics Faculty, Students, and Staff are encouraged to attend!

05/03/2024

Congratulations to our Biostatistics Faculty & Staff who were honored at this past State of the School for their various accomplishments.

Vivian Zhang won the Staff Award for excellence for her work as a senior data analyst in our department. Her outstanding contributions and dedication to her work have been noticed by many within and outside our department.

Xiao Wu, Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, was named a 2024 Calderon Award for Junior Faculty recipient. The award supports junior faculty development and is chosen based on the scientific merit of their research and its significance for public health, as well as the impact of this award on their future careers

Todd Ogden, Professor of Biostatistics, was given the Innovation in Teaching Award for his Introduction to Mathematical Statistics class, a foundational course for our MPH program and vital part of student education in the principles of probability theory.

Congratulations again to all award recipients!

05/01/2024

This past Friday was our 2024 Biostatistics Practicum/APEX Symposium, where our graduating Master’s students presented their findings from their culminating experiential learning projects. From Cancer Research to Bayesian Statistics, students showed their contributions in a variety of key topics. Whether in the labs of professors at CUIMC or working in companies such as Pfizer, students put their skills to work. Students and faculty also heard from Nadiya Pavlishyn (MS '19) as our symposium keynote speaker.

We’re so proud of all of our students and are excited to see where their valuable insights take them in building a better future through public health. Congratulations to the Class of 2024!

05/01/2024

This Thursday, Dr. Annie Qu of the University of California Irvine will present her research on, "Optimal Individualized Treatment Rule For Combination Treatments Under Budget Constraints" as part of our Levin Lecture series. Join us at 11:45am in the ARB 8th floor auditorium to hear about this exciting new research in the Biostatistics field. All are welcome!

04/26/2024

Today's the day! Join us for our 2024 Biostatistics Practicum/APEX Symposium. Graduating Master's students will present their research from their practicum/APEX experience starting at 1pm in the Hammer Building.

From Bayesian Statistics to Cancer Research, our students have been hard at work across the many areas of public health. You can find out more about the numerous topics and find a session that interests you at the link below: https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/academics/departments/biostatistics/news-events/2024-biostatistics-practicum-apex-symposium

04/25/2024

Today's Levin Lecture at 11:45am in the ARB 8th Floor Auditorium is from Dr. Hongtu Zhu of the University of North Carolina. He will present on, "Revolutionizing Medical Image Data Analysis: Uniting AI and Statistics for Breakthroughs and Challenges". All are welcome!

04/17/2024

Tomorrow at 11:45am in Hess Commons Dr. Bei Jiang of the University of Alberta will give a lecture on, "Conformalized Fairness via Quantile Regression". All are welcome to come learn with us in our Levin Lecture series!

04/16/2024

Don’t forget to stop by the ARB 6th Floor Lobby tomorrow from 4-5pm for T-Time! We’ll be enjoying the start of spring with fresh fruit and cookies, so come by for a sweet treat! All Biostatistics students, faculty, and staff welcome.

04/10/2024

Tomorrow, Dr. Grace Yi of the University of Western Ontario will give a talk on, "Enhancing Survival Data Analysis: Graphical Proportional Hazards Measurement Error Models" as part of our Levin Lecture series. Come learn with us Thursday at 11:45am in the ARB 8th floor auditorium!

04/09/2024

It's hard to believe it but tomorrow is the last Computing Club meeting of the semester! This meeting will focus on presentation slides in LaTeX using Beamer. It's a great opportunity to prep for any end of the year presentations you may have.

Hammer LL 107 at 11:45am or on Zoom via the link in our instagram bio!

04/08/2024

🔬 Mathematician & Biostatistician Wenpin Hou is pioneering genomic research using AI! From theory to practice, her work bridges gaps, unlocking insights crucial for disease treatment & prevention.

Read more about Wenpin's work!

Columbia Public Health

In a faculty Q&A, Assistant Professor of Biostatistics Wenpin Hou shares her research journey.

04/08/2024

Congratulations to Elly Kipkogei & Yinjun Zhao for winning TRANSFORM TL1 Training Awards!

These research awards are intended to provide trainees with additional research training to prepare for a research career that can contribute in some meaningful way to understanding risk of disease, improving diagnosis and prevention, and tailoring treatment based on an individual’s variation in genes, environment, and/or lifestyle.

04/03/2024

Tomorrow, Dr. Rebecca Betensky of NYU's School of Global Health will give a talk on, "Estimation and regression for sequentially-truncated data" at 11:45am in the ARB 8th floor auditorium. Come by and learn with us!

04/03/2024

Don't let the gloomy weather get you down, come by and enjoy some fresh tapas with us at T-Time today from 4-5pm in the ARB 6th floor lobby! All Biostatistics Faculty, Staff, and Students welcome!

03/21/2024

Today's Levin Lecture will be in Hammer 312! Come see Dr. Thomas Richardson present on, "Single World Intervention Graphs: A simple framework for unifying graphs and potential outcomes with applications to mediation analysis" at 11:45am.

03/20/2024

Welcome back from spring break! To celebrate the start of spring, we’ve got a special spring T-Time with lots of spring treats! 4-5pm, ARB 6th floor lobby!