University of Washington researcher Kevin Lin is working to reconstruct the hidden history of a cell, from healthy to diseased, using a single tissue snapshot. With a $2 million award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), he aims to develop a suite of AI-driven tools that can build a “computational time machine” for human biology that will help researchers identify therapeutic targets at the earliest stages of disease, long before patients experience symptoms.

The University of Washington Department of Biostatistics continues to rank among the top ten graduate programs in the United States, according to the U.S.News & World Report’s 2026 Best Graduate Schools released late Monday.

Q&A with PhD student Willow Crawford-Crudell discussing what inspired her to pursue biostatistics, experience in the UW PhD program, and goals for the future.

In 2026, student teams from the UW Biostatistics MS Capstone program collaborated with UW research centers to evaluate trends in treatments for patients with breast cancer and appendicitis. A third project explored whether cell shape is related to cellular function, and whether this relationship can be detected computationally.