University of Washington Biostatistics students make a difference in people’s lives in many different ways, including participation in summer internships. This summer, students tackled a broad range of challenges such as exploring the impact of biofuel assumptions on energy projections, analyzing brain grey matter patterns in Alzheimer’s patients to link disease progression to cognitive assessment, and exploring data relating to exonerations and wrongful incarcerations to further understand the impact of Innocence Organizations on state exonerations rates.
Student Internship Highlights
Erika Fox, MS Capstone
Internship
Mathematical Statistician Pathways Intern, Office of Long-Term Energy Modeling, Office of Energy Analysis, U.S. Department of Energy Information Administration
Responsibilities
The Office of Long-Term Modeling makes projections about energy supply and demand in the U.S. for the next 2-3 decades. It does so via a large linear programming model made up of various sub-modules. My project focused on one of these sub-modules: the Liquid Fuels Market Module. In particular, I focused on updating assumptions related to the production of various biofuels and analyzing the impact these updates have on energy projections.
Most Valuable Take-Away
My most valuable take-away from this experience was an introduction to the energy sector, something vastly different from what I've learned about in my classes at UW, as well as an introduction to employment with the federal government.
Healy Li, MS Capstone
Internship
Biostatistics Intern, Clinical Statistics, Suzhou Abogen Biosciences, China
Responsibilities
Cleaning, organizing, visualizing clinical data, and generating tables and graphs for research report by using R.
Most Valuable Takeaway
The most valuables thing I gained is that I finally have a chance to get familiar with the actual vaccine development process in pharmaceutical industry, and also have a chance to know what dose a clinical dataset looks like, such as the data format and naming method. I believe these are very helpful for my future career and I could never have learn them from a course in school.
Grant Hopkins, PhD
Internship
Biostatistics Intern, Biostatistics Innovation Group, Gilead Sciences
Responsibilities
I performed an empirical analysis of five parametric dose-response models evaluated using real-world dose-finding studies.
Most Valuable Takeaway
Parametric mean modeling with the intention of ‘goodness-of-fit’ poses many philosophical questions pertinent to model selection.
Winnie Mei, MS Capstone
Internship
Biostatistics Intern, Alzheimer’s Therapeutics Research Institute (ATRI), University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine
Responsibilities
Performed data standardization for complex clinical trial data and created interactive web reports and statistical visualizations to enhance the management and oversight of clinical trials for Alzheimer's Disease and dementia
Most Valuable Takeaway
I improved my skills in data visualization and statistical programming. I acquired a better understanding of the latest developments in Alzheimer's disease research and gained insight into the critical role played by biostatisticians/statisticians in clinical trials.
Fernanda Montoya, MS Capstone
Internship
Statistician Intern, National Agricultural Statistics Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Responsibilities/Work
Evaluated and summarized primary survey data from agricultural producers in the Northwest region. My involvement spanned analysis and estimation related to quarterly agricultural production surveys, the 2022 Census of Agriculture, and crop progress and condition publications.
Most Valuable Takeaway
It’s been a lot of fun to get experience in the agricultural field. UW Biostat promotes such vast areas of application for biostatistical techniques, and it has been exciting to explore yet another area where biostatisticians are needed.
Gavin Pierce, MS Capstone
Internship
Research Intern, Statistical Applications, The Mountain-Whisper-Light statistical consulting firm
Responsibilities
Exploratory analysis of data relating to exonerations and wrongful incarcerations, with the intention of further understanding the impact of Innocence Organizations on state exonerations rates
Most Valuable Takeaway
Hands-on, independent research with real data in an area of interest offered an invaluable introduction into applied statistics and data science.
Weiqiao (Rachu) Shen, MS Capstone
Internship
Statistics Intern, Immunology, Eli Lilly
Responsibilities
Developed an R markdown program to generate HTML files with interactive and reactive visualizations to assist country/site selection.
Most Valuable Takeaway
Communication skills
Yilin Song, PhD
Internship
Biostatistics Intern, Product Development and Data Science, Roche-Genentech,
Responsibilities
I was working on Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) data on patients with Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) or Diabetic Macular Edema (DME). The goal of my project was to explore and develop a sampling strategy to obtain a subsample of 2D image slices that could return maximum and accurate information on the 3D image volumes.
Most Valuable Takeaway
I had the chance to experience the work and life at an international Biotech company. Also, I got a better understanding of how a drug was developed from research to molecules to clinical trials and finally in production to the market. There are so many people, departments, money, and considerations that were involved in all of those steps.
Junhyoun Sung, MS Capstone
Internship #1
Independent Research Assistant, Division of Biostatistics, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Responsibilities
I analyzed the physical activity patterns of elderly women using accelerometry data and machine learning, and studied its association with various biomarkers. I am now drafting a paper under the guidance of Prof. Chongzhi Di.
Internship #2
Independent Research Assistant, Department of Biostatistics & Department of Radiology, University of Washington
Responsibilities
I analyzed Alzheimer's disease patients' grey matter patterns from MRI data using matrix factorization and variational autoencoders (VAE) combined with linear mixed models or survival models, linking disease progression to cognitive assessments. Guided by Prof. Gary Chan (UW Biostatistics) and Profs. David Haynor and Dean Shibata (UW Radiology), I contributed to papers on both topics, with a primary authorship on the VAE research.
Most Valuable Takeaways
For my first internship, I learned to analyze physical activity patterns using functional data analysis and had a valuable experience structuring and writing a paper as the first author.
For my second internship, I gained invaluable experience handling brain map and MRI data, understanding cortical/subcortical attributes and their link to cognitive assessments, while leading the development of variational autoencoders from scratch.
Sujing Zhang, MS Capstone
Internship
Research Assistant, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Responsibilities/Work
Performed sample size calculations for five study designs aimed at assessing alternative treatments for neurosyphilis.
Most Valuable Takeaway
Getting to know more about HPV related research.
Raylynn Zhou, MS Capstone
Internship
Genentech, Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK)
Responsibilities/Work
1)Curated a library for in-house data, and 2) Developed an R Shiny app that cleans and visualizes the input data and generates a MetID report for users.
Most Valuable Takeaway
Getting the chance to know what real-world data looks like and the opportunity to collaborate with many talented colleagues.
Interested in our graduate programs? Learn more about our PhD, MS Capstone, and MS Thesis programs.
