News & Events

Biostatistics faculty promoted to new appointments

Congratulations to Gary Chan, Kathleen Kerr, and Noah Simon, core faculty members in the Department of Biostatistics who were recently promoted to new appointments.

Kathleen Kerr

Promoted to Full Professor

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Kathleen Kerr
Kathleen Kerr

Kerr's current research focuses on developing and evaluating statistical methodology for biomarkers and risk prediction models.  This work is extremely timely, as there is currently a surge of biomarker research in many clinical fields. There is a particular need for guidance on evaluating new biomarkers for applications where existing biomarkers are already routinely used.

Kerr's early work was among the first to propose and develop rigorous statistical methods for the analysis of gene expression microarray data.  She wrote seminal papers on experimental design for microarray studies.  More recently, she has collaborated on genomewide association studies in two population-based cohorts, the MultiEthnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) and the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SoL).

Kerr's current projects include studies to understand and improve the diagnostic process in pathology.  She is helping launch the Dog Aging Project and is also director of the UW Biostatistics Summer Institute in Statistics for Clinical & Epidemiological Research (SISCER).

See Kerr's Bio

Gary Chan

Promoted to Full Professor

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Gary Chan
Gary Chan

Gary Chan is an innovator of statistical methods for population health.  He has developed various new methods for analyzing observational studies, interventions with non-compliance, complex survival endpoints, biased sampling and medical cost analysis.

Chan’s publications covered a broad spectrum from theoretical to applied statistics.  His works are motivated from both theoretical considerations to improve existing methodologies and practical applications in medicine and social sciences.

Chan currently collaborates with health services researchers on randomized trials aimed at improving community health.  He was recently named an Associate Director of the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center, and provides statistical expertise in collaboration with neurologists, pathologists, radiologists and other medical researchers in advancing the understanding of complex neurodegenerative diseases in aging population, using national clinical data maintained by the Center.

See Chan's Bio

 

Noah Simon

Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure

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Noah Simon
Noah Simon

Noah Simon’s research intersects biology, statistics, and computer science.  As an expert in machine learning, he develops open source software that analyzes high dimensional multi-modal data such as biomolecular, clinical, and imaging modalities, which identifies effective biomarkers that guide clinical practice.

Simon’s interest in personalized medicine is a theme in his research, finding the most effective way to measure the complex biomolecular factors of a disease, and align a treatment with the ideal populations that would benefit.  He has developed several statistical learning packages for the R programming language, and is involved in projects building large-scale implementations on graphics cards and clusters.  Through this work, he develops models that help us understand our underlying biology and often points to important biological targets that may point to the treatment of various diseases.

Teaching and mentoring graduate students is another way Simon supports the greater scientific community.  He teaches a short course on the analysis of biomedical big data that regularly enrolls 100+ students from the medical, scientific, and statistical communities, and has mentored 8 biostatistics graduate students in his 5 years at UW.