Alumni
Recent Graduates
Spring 2022
Fall 2021
Tara Kligner
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Advisor: Elizabeth Lowenthal, MD, MSCE
Preparing for Use of a Computerized Battery to Identify Neurocognitive Impairments Among Children and Adolescents Affected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus in Botswana
Summer 2021
Amelia van Pelt
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Advisor: Elizabeth Lowenthal, MD, MSCE
Preparing for Use of a Computerized Battery to Identify Neurocognitive Impairments Among Children and Adolescents Affected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus in Botswana
Darcy Ellis
Epidemiologist, CSL Behring
Dissertation Advisor: Sean Hennessy, PhD, PharmD
"Neurologic and Metabolic Safety of Fluoroquinolones"
Spring 2021
Jessica Meeker
Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, CDC
Dissertation Advisor: Mary Regina Boland, PhD
"Investigating the Effect of Individual-Level and Neighborhood-Level Exposures on Delivery Outcomes"
Sherrie Xie
VMD student, University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Advisor: Blanca Himes, PhD
"Investigating the Effect of Individual-Level and Neighborhood-Level Exposures on Delivery Outcomes"
Fall 2020
Summer 2020
Sondra Lavigne
VMD student, University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Advisor: Theoklis Zaoutis, MD, MSCE
"AntiMicrobial Use and Resistance: Intersections of Companion Animal and Public Health"
Fall 2019
M. Elle Saine
MD Student, University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Advisor: Vincent Lo Re, MD, MSCE
"Measuring Disease-Related Stigma Among Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C Virus Infection"
Tirza Calderone
Epidemiology Manager, GlazoSmithKline
Dissertation Advisors: Alison Buttenheim, PhD, MBA & Kristen Feemster, MD, MPH, MSHP
"Addressing Disparities in Pertussis Epidemiology"
Summer 2019
Todd Miano
Instructor of Epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Advisor: Sean Hennessy, PharmD, PhD
"Drug-Drug Interactions and Kidney Disease in Hospitalized Patients"
Alexis Zebrowski
Research Assistant Professor, Thomas Jefferson University
Dissertation Advisor: Douglas Wiebe, PhD
"Intensity of Care and the Injured Older Adult: Measurement, Variability, and Outcomes Using Medicare Claims Data"
Meijia Zhou
Manager, Johnson & Johnson
Dissertation Advisor: Sean Hennessy, PharmD, PhD
"Identifying Signals of Potential Drug-Drug Interactions Involving Oral Anticoagulants Using Real World Clinical Data"
Fall 2018
Audrey Blewer
Assistant Professor, Duke University
Benjamin S. Abella, MD, MPhil
"Bystander Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation: Training, Delivery, and Measurement Error"
May 2016
Justin Brown
"The Courage Trial: A Phase II Randomized Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Dose-Response Effects of Exercise on Prognostic Biomarkers Among Colon Cancer Survivors"\
Anne Grossestruer
Assistant Professor, Harvard University
Dissertation Advisor: Benjamin S. Abella, MD, MPhil
"Sudden Cardiac Arrest: Novel Uses of Risk Standardization and Post-Arrest Body Temperature to Improve Outcomes"
December 2016
Michael O. Harhay
"Endpoints in Intensive Care Unit Based Randomized Clinical Trials"
Alison J. Culyba
"Role of Adult Connection in Violence Prevention Among Male Youth During Daily Activity"
May 2015
Nikkita Patel
"Characterization of Illegal Wildlife Trade Networks"
Shannon Lynch
"Neighborhood Cancerization: New approaches Linking Social and Biological Mechanisms of Cancer"
Brian Finkelman
"Prediction in Therapeutic Effectiveness Research: Prolonged Dose Titration among Warfarin Patients and Model Transportability"
Heather de Vries-McClintock
"Adherence to oral hypoglycemic agents: patterns, correlates and outcomes"
May 2014
Laurel Redding
"Understanding the Use of Antibiotics on Small Dairy Farms in Rural Peru"
May 2013
Sydney Brown
"The Epidemiology of Readmissions to the Intensive Care Unit and Its Use as a Quality Indicator"
December 2013
Meenakashi Bewtra
"Dying to Save Your Colon? Changing the Way We Look at Ulverative Colitis"
Pinyo Rattanaumpawan
"Risk Factors for and Impact of Ambulatory Urinary Tract Infections Caused by High MIC-Fluoroquinoline Susceptible E. coli in Women"
December 2012
Rebecca Speck
“Chemotherapy Induced Peripheral Neuropathy in Non-Metastatic Breast Cancer: Patient Experience and Clinical Impact”
May 2011
Richard Aplenc
“Pharmacogenetic and Pharmacogenomic Studies in Pediatric Leukemia”
Huaqing Zhao
“Analyzing Population Based Genetic Association Studies with Propensity Score Approach"
August 2010
Sharon Meropol
“Evaluating Risks from Antibacterial Medication Therapy Using an Observational Primary Care Database"
December 2010
Christopher Rowan
“Clinical Importance of the Drug Interaction Between Statins and CYP3A4 Inhibitors”
Where do Biostatistics graduates go? Many go on, either directly or following a postdoctoral position, to academic careers. Others play a major role in biotechnology, pharmaceutical companies or government. Training in biostatistics can prepare you for many other walks of life. Below is a list of some recent graduates and their accomplishments.
2025
Jeremy Rubin, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Maryland College Park
Dissertation Advisor: Jarcy Zee, PhD
"Statistical Methods for Variable Selection and Prediction with Pathomic Features"
Gary Hettinger, PhD
Assistant Professor, NYU
Dissertation Advisor: Nandita Mitra, PhD
"Causal Inference Methods to Evaluate Health Policies with Spillover"
Dazheng Zhang, PhD
Statistics Advisor - Eli Lilly and Company
Dissertation Advisor: Yong Chen, PhD
"Empowering RCT with Multi-Site Multi-Source RWD: A Statistical Learning Perspective"
2024
Jiayi Tong, PhD
Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University
Dissertation Advisor: Yong Chen, PhD
"Distributed Algorithms and Statistical Inference for Multi-Site Analyses: Unfolding the Complexity of Heterogeneity in Real-World Data"
Emily Getzen, PhD
Machine Learning Scientist, Apple
Dissertation Advisor: Qi Long, PhD
"Mining for Health: Advancing Trustworthy Statistical and Machine Learning Methods for Complex Electronic Health Records Data"
Kyle Coleman, PhD
Research Scientist, Cedars-Sinai
Dissertation Advisor: Mingyao Li, PhD
"Machine learning methods for the analysis of multi-modal spatial omics data"
Eunchan Bae, PhD
Senior Statistician, AbbVie
Dissertation Advisor: Russell Shinohara, PhD
"Statistical Segmentation Models for Neuroimaging Data"
Jenny Shen, PhD
Senior Statistician, Spark Therapeutics, Inc.
Dissertation Advisors: Kristin Linn, PhD & Rebecca Hubbard, PhD
"Robust and Replicable Statistical Methods for Incomplete Data with Complex Observational Patterns"
2023
Benny Ren
Assistant Professor, Stony Brook University
Dissertation Advisors: Ian Barnett, PhD & Jeff Morris, PhD
Francesca Mandel
Mathematical Statistician, Food & Drug Administration
Dissertation Advisor:
“Statistical Methods for Neural Networks”
Hayley Locke
Dissertation Advisor: Sharon Xie, PhD
"Missing Data and Measurement Error Methods for Left-Truncated Survival Data"
Kenneth Locke, Jr.
Principle Statistician, Glaxo Smith Kline
Dissertation Advisors: Yong Chen, PhD, and Richard J. Landis, PhD
"Preserving Patient Privacy in Modeling Multi-Category Outcomes across Real-World Data Sources"
Rebecca Deek
Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation Advisor: Hongzhe Lee, PhD
"Statistical Methods for Modeling Complex Dependency Structures in Zero-inflated Metagenomic Sequencing Data"
Andrew Chen
Assistant Professor, Medical University of South Carolina
Dissertation Advisors: Haochang Shou, PhD and Russell Shinohara, PhD
"Novel Methods for Statistical Analysis of Covariance Structures"
Danni Tu
Data Scientist, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
Dissertation Advisor: Russell Shinohara, PhD
"Statistical and Machine Learning Methods for Neuroimaging and Neurocognitive Data"
Sarah Weinstein
Assistant Professor, Temple University
Dissertation Advisors: Kristin Linn, PhD and Russell Shinohara, PhD
"Statistical Methods for Extracting and Comparing Patterns in Multimodal Neuroimaging Studies"
Haotian Zheng
Senior Biostatistician II, Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Dissertation Advisor: Hongzhe Lee, PhD
"Transfer Learning in Classification and Regression with Summary Statistics"
2022
Hannah Lindner
Statistician, Radiation Effects Research Foundation
"Statistical methods for the identification, evaluation, and classification of non-monotone biomarkers in case-control studies"
Dissertation Advisors: Warren Bilker, PhD and Phyllis Gimotty, PhD
Assistant Research Professor, Fox-Chase Cancer Center
Jill Schnall Hasler
Assistant Research Professor, Fox-Chase Cancer Center
Dissertation Advisor: Jinbo Chen, PhD
“Methods for Comparative Effectiveness Research with Real-World Data”
Lillian Boe
Principal Biostatistician, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Dissertation Advisor: Pamela Shaw, PhD
“Statistical Approaches to Reducing Bias and Improving Variance Estimation in the Presence of Covariate and Outcome Measurement Error”
Carolyn Lou
Manager of Biostatistics, Pfizer
Dissertation Advisor: Russell Shinohara, PhD
“Statistical Methods for the Analysis and Development of Radiomic Predictors”
Joanna Harton
Real-World Evidence Analytics Scientist, Genesis Research
Dissertation Advisor: Nandita Mitra, PhD, Rebecca Hubbard, PhD
“Methods for Comparative Effectiveness Research with Real-World Data”
Jian Hu
Assistant Professor, Tenure Track, Emory University
Dissertation Advisor: Mingyao Li, PhD
“Machine Learning Methods for the Analysis of Single-Cell and Spatially Resolved Transcriptomics Data”
Nicholas Illenberger
Assistant Professor, New York University
Dissertation Advisor: Nandita Mitra, PhD
“Causal Inference Methods for Joint Censored Cost and Effectiveness Outcomes”
Jianqiao Wang
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Harvard University
Dissertation Advisor: Hongzhe Lee, PhD
“Inference of shared genetic architecture with genome-wide association data”
Yaqian "Angela" Zhu
Senior Biostatistician, Johnson & Johnson
Dissertation Advisor: Nandita Mitra, PhD, Jason Roy, PhD
“Causal Inference Methods for Addressing Positivity Violations and Bias in Observational and Cluster-Randomized Studies”
2021
Justin Lakkis
Quantitative Researcher, Citadel
Dissertation Advisor: Mingyao Li, PhD
“Scalable Machine Learning Methods for the Analysis of Single-cell Transcriptomics and Multiomics Data”
Victoria Arthur
DissertationAdvisor: Jinbo Chen, PhD
“Statistical Methods for Paired Transplant Genetic Data”
Mackenzie Edmondson
Senior Scientist, Merck & Co.
Dissertation Advisor: Yong Chen, PhD
“Privacy-Preserving Distributed Regression Algorithms for Analysis of Multi-Site Real-World Data”
Rong Ma
Postdoctoral Researcher, Stanford University
Dissertation Advisors: Hongzhe Lee, PhD and Tony Cai, PhD
“Problems in High-Dimensional Statistics with Applications in Genomics, Metabolomics, and Microbiomics”
Arielle Marks-Anglin
Human Services Researcher, Mathematica, Inc.
Dissertation Advisor: Yong Chen, PhD
“Methods for Bias Reduction in Evidence-Based Medicine"
