Biostatistics Research and Faculty
Notable Projects Heading link
-
Cancer Research
The Biostatistics Shared Resource Core works on research across three programs: cancer biology, translational oncology and cancer prevention and control. They also facilitate the translation of research findings into clinical trials and to disseminate new knowledge that supports the planning of new collaborative research projects. Learn more
-
PHAME Center
The Population Health Analytics, Metric and Evaluation (PHAME) center integrates novel technology with academic expertise to provide community-level data analysis, evaluation and visualization for community members, policy makers, researchers and students in the city of Chicago and beyond. Learn more
-
RECOVER Inititative
UIC-affiliated biostatisticians have been selected to act as a Biostatistics Node for the processing and analysis of data in the nationwide Long COVID RECOVER initiative – a patient-centered, integrated, adaptive research network created by the National Institutes of Health.
Faculty bios Heading link
Saria Awadalla, PhD, assistant professor of biostatistics, focuses on high-dimensional data, joint modeling of latent growth curves, causal inference and randomized intervention trials. His applied research examines exposure to environmental mixtures, predictive models of chronic post-surgical pain and randomized clinical trial of the effects of glucocorticoids on cognitive outcomes in HIV+ women. Globally, he is assisting Sudan’s National Public Health Lab with their efforts to conduct surveillance and statistical modeling of COVID-19 case data as well as that of other endemic diseases such as malaria and cholera. Faculty Profile
Sanjib Basu, PhD, Paul Levy and Virginia F. Tomasek Professor of Biostatistics, is the director of the biostatistics section. He is the co-director of the Population Health Analytics Metrics and Evaluation (PHAME) Center, providing a hub of advanced data visualization, evaluation, and analytics to community members, students, policy makers and researchers in the city of Chicago and beyond. Faculty Profile
Dulal Bhaumik, PhD, professor of biostatistics, focuses on environmental statistics, statistical problems in psychiatry, biostatistics, design of experiments and statistical inferences. Currently, he is investigating sample size determination and power computation for fMRI data. Bhaumik led global health surveillance of early data from numerous countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Faculty Profile
Hua Yun Chen, PhD, professor of biostatistics, conducts research focused on developing innovative statistical methods for analyzing complex health science data. His areas of expertise include statistical methods for analysis of data with missing values, for design and analysis of biased samples in epidemiological studies, and for identification of gene-environment interactions. His recent research work also covers methods for analysis of high-dimensional data with weak effects and for study of adverse health effects of exposures to mixture of environmental pollutants. Faculty Profile
Zhengjia (Nelson) Chen, PhD, associate professor of biostatistics, is completing methodology research on adaptive and sequential approaches for clinical trials. He develops corresponding user-friendly statistical software to facilitate these trial approaches. His other areas of research interest include bioinformatics, proteomics and microbiome data analysis. Faculty Profile
Hakan Demirtas, PhD, associate professor of biostatistics, is a research expert on missing data, multiple imputation, stochastic simulation, random number generation and biostatistical software development. Faculty Profile
Li Liu, PhD, associate professor of biostatistics, serves as the ombudsperson for the UIC School of Public Health. Her research interests include longitudinal/multi-level data methodologies. She provides statistical support for cancer research across UIC and is a part of global health efforts with randomized longitudinal trials in Malawi on HIV prevention and prenatal care.
Jiehuan Sun, PhD, assistant professor of biostatistics, focuses his research efforts on high-dimensional data, genomics data and electronic health records data. Faculty Profile
Meida Wang, PhD has a background in statistical genetics, with specific training and expertise in genome-wide association studies, joint analysis of multiple phenotypes in genome, association detection between ordinal trait and rare variants. Wang’s research focuses on developing novel statistical methods and computational tools for identifying and characterizing genetic variants that influence susceptibility to human complex diseases or traits, such as identification of risk factors for COPD and the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue phenotypes. Faculty Profile
Rrita Zejnullahi, PhD is a Statistician and a Clinical Assistant Professor of Biostatistics with appointments in the School of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and the College of Applied Health Sciences. Her research focuses on the quantification of uncertainty of point estimates from predictive models, the formulation of effect sizes and effect size estimators in randomized and quasi-experiments when adjusting for covariates, and extensions of meta-analysis methods to small sample situations. Faculty Profile