Department of Biostatistics Overview
History
The University of Washington was founded in 1861 as the Territorial University of Washington. From a school serving fewer than forty students, it has grown to be the largest single-campus institution of higher learning in the West. Today, approximately 2,500 full-time faculty serve a student population of thirty-four thousand, one- fourth of them graduate and professional students. The University offers undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees in eighty-eight departments and units.
The School of Public Health and Community Medicine (SPHCM) is the only accredited school of public health north of Berkeley and west of Minneapolis and is a national leader in public health education and research. One of 17 schools and colleges at the University of Washington, the School has five departments: Biostatistics, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, Epidemiology, Health Services, and Pathobiology.
The Biostatistics Department was initially formed in 1965 as the Biomathematics Group, an interdisciplinary program administered by the Graduate School. For many years the group enjoyed wide and active participation from faculty in Mathematics, Biostatistics, Zoology, Fisheries, Forestry, Genetics and other campus units. With the establishment of the Statistics Department not occurring until 1979, the Biostatistics program, having more students, faculty, graduates and financial support, had a particularly strong leadership role within the Biomathematics group into the early 1980s.
In 1986 the home of the Biostatistics and Biomathematics Graduate Program was officially shifted from the inter-school Biomathematics Group to the Biostatistics Department of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine. The two pathways that had been pursued by the vast majority of graduates were retained: the health sciences biology pathway and the Quantitative Ecology and Resource Management pathway (QERM). A few years later, QERM moved to the Center for Quantitative Science in Forestry, Fisheries and Wildlife, and from then on the Department of Biostatistics granted degrees in the "health sciences biology pathway."
The Department currently grants M.S., M.P.H., and Ph.D. degrees in Biostatistics; additionally, in the fall of 2000 the department added (jointly with Statistics) a Statistical Genetics pathway to its Ph.D. program, as well as a Master's-level Statistical Genetics certificate program.
General Information
In addition to its close ties with the Statistics Department, the Department of Biostatistics maintains close relationships with departments within SPHCM through faculty joint appointments (Health Services, Environmental Health), joint course offerings (Epidemiology, Health Services), serving on thesis and dissertation committees, and collaborative research. We also have ties with the Dental School and the College of Medicine through joint faculty appointments, and with nearly every other School and College through collaborative research. Outside the University, the department interacts through faculty appointments and research with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Group Health Cooperative (GHC), the Seattle Veterans Administration Hospital, and the King County Health Department.
Approximately 75-80 students are enrolled in the department's master's and doctoral programs, with an annual incoming class of 15-20 students. The department has graduated over 400 students since its inception.
The Department's mission is to serve as a source of expertise and a focus for training and research in the quantitative aspects of public health and medicine, and to promote the use of rigorous quantitative methods in the biomedical and public health sciences.
The demand for biostatisticians continues to outstrip supply. Biostatisticians are integral to medical and public health education and research. In recent years there has been a strong growth in the application of statistics to epidemiological studies, clinical trials, health services research, medical imaging, and genomics.
The Department's main administrative offices are housed in the Magnuson Health Sciences Building at the south end of campus, in F and H wings (F-600 and H-655), with additional student and computer lab space in T Wing.
Prospective applicants may arrange a visit to the department by contacting the Student Services Counselor (currently Ms. Renée Albert: rca@u.washington.edu).