Biostatistics News

Vice Dean Jeanine Buchanich

Path to public health: Vice Dean Jeanine Buchanich

Jeanine Buchanich, PhD, MPH, MEd, started her journey as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh, where she traversed a winding path to her new role as the vice dean of Pitt Public Health.
Kayleigh Adamson

Making a Difference with Data

With an undergraduate degree in neuroscience, Kayleigh Adamson (BIOST ‘20) has always been fascinated by the intersection of health research and statistics, but it wasn't until she came to Pitt that she developed her true passion for biostatistics. It was a good fit with her heavy science background.

Haoran Hu

Hu Publishes in Nature Communications

PhD student Haoran Hu has made a significant contribution to the field of single-cell research with the publication of a paper titled "A unified model-based framework for doublet or multiplet detection in single-cell multiomics data" in the top research journal Nature Communications.
Haley Grant

Innovating biostatistics education at Pitt

Assistant Professor Haley Grant, PhD, has been a faculty member in the Department of Biostatistics and Health Data Science since 2023.
Pitt Public Health Building

Department renamed at Pitt’s School of Public Health

The Department of Biostatistics will become the Department of Biostatistics and Health Data Science to reflect the increasing growth of complex data and biotechnology now being employed in the field of public health.
Runjia Li

Runjia Li, PhD student, wins scholarship

Runjia Li (PhD '24) has been selected as one of the prestigious American Statistical Association's Biopharmaceutical Section Scholarship Award winners.
Pedro Baldoni, Soumik Purkayastha and Qiong Wu.

The Biostatistics Department welcomes three new faculty members

Welcoming Pedro Baldoni, Soumik Purkayastha and Qiong Wu.
Xinjun Wang

Wang treads path from student to faculty member

Xinjun Wang (PhD, BIOST ’22) found his groove developing new statistical models for single-cell muti-omics data during graduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
(LEFT TO RIGHT) TINA NDOH, SALLY WENZEL, TIFFANY GARY-WEBB, JEANINE BUCHANICH, AND DARA MENDEZ,

Advocates listen and learn, celebrate and plan at first Environmental Justice Summit

May 9-11 was Pittsburgh’s first Environmental Justice Summit with the theme Reflections, Connections, and Collaborative Action.
Craig Parzynski (MS ’11)

Biostatistics alum reflects on his journey

Craig Parzynski (MS ’11) discovered a love for problem solving at the University of Pittsburgh. He earned his master’s degree in biostatistics and gained a solid foundation for a career in medical research. However, his path to biostatistics was not straightforward.
Ma and Tang plus journal cover

Ma and Tang propose smart data augmentation to address imbalances in data

Department of Biostatistics Chair Yan Ma is the corresponding author on “Smart data augmentation: One equation is all you need," recently published in Statistical Analysis and Data Mining: The ASA Data Science Journal. The paper’s co-authors include Lu Tang, vice chair for education in the Department of Biostatistics.
Manqi Cai

Cai publishes in Communications Biology

PhD student Manqi Cai’s article “scMD facilitates cell type deconvolution using single-cell DNA methylation references”  was published in the Communications Biology Journal.
George Tseng

Tseng publishes in Translational Psychiatry and Computational Biology

Dr. George Tseng has two new recently published papers. The first is titled "Glucose dysregulation in antipsychotic-naïve first episode psychosis: in silico exploration of gene expression signatures." This study investigates the link between first-episode psychosis patients not yet treated with antipsychotics and early metabolic issues like insulin resistance.

Na Bo

Bo wins ASA HPSS Student Paper Award

Professor Ying Ding's student Na Bo has been selected as one of the Health Policy Statistics Section Student Paper Competition winners. She will travel to the 2024 Joint Statistical Meetings in Portland, Oregon this summer to present her work titled "A meta-learner-based framework to analyze treatment heterogeneity in survival outcomes: application to pediatric asthma care under COVID-19 disruption".

Gehui Zhang

Zhang wins ASA Bayesian Statistical Science Award

PhD student Gehui Zhang has been selected as the winner of the 2024 SBSS student paper competition. Zhang will travel to the 2024 Joint Statistical Meetings in Portland, Oregon to present research titled Stochastic Volatility with Informative Missingness. The paper pioneer's statistical methodology for stochastic volatility models with non-random missing data. Introducing a novel imputation method based on Tukey's representation, combined with conditional particle filtering, the approach overcomes limitations in existing methods.