Graduate Student Tina Cunningham

Tina Cunningham (Biostatistics, Ph.D. Student) was selected to receive a School of Medicine Phi Kappa Phi Scholarship. Phi Kappa Phi is a national honor society promoting the pursuit of excellence in all academic fields.

Graduate Student Epiphanie Nyirabahizi

Epiphanie Nyirabahizi (Biostatistics, Ph.D. Student) presented "Evaluating Neurotoxicity of a Mixture of five OP Pesticides Using a Composite Score" at the Society of Toxicology (SOT) annual meeting on 3/16/2009, in Baltimore, MD, and received an outstanding presentation award.

Graduate Student Adam Sima

Adam Sima presented a poster, titled "Effect of Intravenous Serum Creatinine in a Population of Patients with Stable Renal Dysfunction" as second author at the ICAAC/IDSA Conference in Washington DC on Oct. 25, 2008.

Kelly Archer

Kellie Archer had an invited presentation on Oct. 13 at the 2008 INFORMS Annual Meeting (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) in Washington D.C. titled, "Variable Selection in High-dimensional Ordinal Class Prediction Problems with Genomics Applications"

Student Emily Sheldon presents at JSM!

The 2008 Joint Statistical Meetings was held August 3 - 7, 2008 in Denver, Colorado. JSM is the largest gathering of statisticians held in North America. It is held jointly with the American Statistical Association, the International Biometric Society (ENAR and WNAR), the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the Statistical Society of Canada. Attended by over 5000 people, activities of the meeting include oral presentations, panel sessions, poster presentations, continuing education courses, exhibit halls, career placement service, society and section business meetings, committee meetings, social activities,and networking opportunities. Congratulations to Emily!

Health and Education Calculator

Dr. Steve Woolf (Family Medicine), Dr. Bob Johnson , and Tina Cunningham (Biostatistics Ph.D. student) developed a Health and Education Calculator tool for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission on Health. The calculator provides a tool for health researchers, health policy makers, and the general public that measures how education is linked to mortality. This tool went live on October 8, 2008. To view the Health and Education Calculator tool, please visit the commission website at http://www.commissiononhealth.org/ . Dr. Woolf indicated “this tool would not function, let alone produce valid data, without the hard work of Bob and Tina, who performed brilliantly in designing the statistical engine under the hood and interfaced with the website developer in New York City”.

For press releases regarding the Health and Education calculator please click on the following links: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2008/10/can-money-buy-g.html
http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2008/10_08-34/LIF

Congratulations

André Williams (Ph.D. Biostatistics Student) received the Biopharmaceutical Applied Statistics Scholarship!

Congratulations to Phillip Yates (Ph.D. Biostatistics Student) who received the Karl E. Peace Biostatistics Award for Excellence and Scholarship!

These scholarships cover the expenses for both André Williams and Phillip Yates to attend the BASS Conference November 3-7.

Welcome

Xiaoyan Deng joins us from Bristol Myers Squbb Co. and will serve as a Biostatistician for the department. Ms. Deng earned her MS degree in Statistics at Rutgers University. Her experience includes clinical and health care statistical data analysis in the pharmaceutical industry.

Also joining the department is Zheng Lu who joins us from Iowa. She was hired as a Biostatistician to work with Dr. Sun on her grants. Ms. Lu currently has her MS degree in Statistics and is pursuing her Ph.D work in Statistics at Iowa State University. Her prior work includes working as a Biostatistician for the University of Maryland and two pharmaceutical companies (i.e., Glaxosmith Kline and BD).

Congratulations

Congratulations to Mark Reimers, who has been appointed as an Associate faculty member at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at VCU!!

Irene Rebecca

Graduate Student  News

Ms. Xiangrong Kong, a Ph.D. Student, received a Graduate School Thesis/Dissertation Assistantship for the Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 semesters.

Ms. Maria  Capparuccini,  a Ph.D. student,  gave birth to a healthy baby girl (Irene Rebecca Capparuccini) on Monday, August 4, 2008. She weighed 7 lbs 4 oz and was 21 inches long. The family is home now and doing well!! (see attached pictures)

Welcome New Graduate Students
Please welcome our 7 graduate students joining the Biostatistics Department in Fall 2008:

On a personal note... Bob Johnson, Ph.D. is expecting his first grandchild in January, 2009. Congratulations Bob!

PAST EVENTS

August 29, 2008
Theater Row 1-011
9:00 a.m.

RESEARCH DAY - Student presentations

August 6, 2008

Organizer and Chair
Dr. Shumei Sun is the organizer and chair, American Statistical Association Annual Meeting, Statistical Analysis of Childhood Precursors of Adult Disease, ASA Biometrics Section, ENAR, Session 419.

August 22, 2008
Sanger Hall 3-016
9:00 a.m.

RESEARCH DAY - Student presentations

June 11-24, 2008

Dr. Mark Reimers will be leading the Cold Spring Harbor course on Genome Scale Data Analysis.
Cold Spring Harbor Integrative Statistical Analysis of Genome Scale Data Course

June 1, 2008

The Department of Biostatistics is proud to announce that Dr. Roy T. Sabo will be joining the faculty on June 1st. Dr. Sabo comes to VCU from The Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Old Dominion University, where he earned his Ph.D. in Computational and Applied Mathematics in December of 2007. Dr. Sabo has been teaching at ODU since 2004. His dissertation was on Modeling and efficient estimation of intra-family correlations.

Also joining the department in June is Cynthia Shier Sabo, who will be supporting the department as the Scientific Administrator. Mrs. Sabo has been employed as a Research Associate at the Department of Pediatrics, Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia. She brings experience in assisting with manuscripts, grant proposals and institutional review board (IRB) submissions. Mrs. Sabo earned her B.S. in Psychology as well as an M.S. in Psychology at Old Dominion University.

ENAR Appointment:
Robert E. Johnson, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Regional Advisory Board;
ENAR Representative: JSM 2008 Program Committee

Biostatistical Data Services
R.K. Elswick, Ph.D., Director
Robert Johnson, Ph.D., Associate Director
The Department of Biostatistics has recently created the Biostatistics Data Services (BDS) to provide funded investigators with comprehensive data management. Specifically, the BDS will serve as the data repository for all data collected from studies, will assist in the development and testing of all data forms, will supervise electronic as well as manual data entry, will assure the accuracy, validity, reliability, and completeness of study data, and will collaborate with study investigators and statisticians to formulate the final form of all datasets used for analysis.  Those interested in using the services of the BDS are encouraged to contact Dr. R.K. Elswick (rkelswic@vcu.edu) or Dr. Robert Johnson (rejohnso@vcu.edu).

May 16, 2008

The School of Medicine will recognize the Forbes' students and this year's recipients of the C. C. Clayton Awards on Friday.
The Clayton awards are presented to outstanding PhD and MS students in their second year of study. This year's recipients are Tracy Estes and Tina Cunningham. The presentation will be in room 2-020 Sanger at 11:00 a.m. http://www.medschool.vcu.edu/gp/student2.html
Please plan to attend!

May 13, 2008

Rhonda Ellis and Xiangrong (Talaci) Kong presented papers at the annual John C. Forbes Graduate Student Honors Colloquium (Forbes Day) http://www.medschool.vcu.edu/gp/student3.html ).