Congratulations to the University of Washington (UW) Department of Biostatistics Class of 2025! Graduating students were recognized at a celebration on Sunday, June 15, attended by family, friends, faculty, and staff.
Professor of Biostatistics Lianne Sheppard delivered the commencement address. Sheppard is also a professor and interim department chair in the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences.
Sheppard encouraged students to lean into the strengths that they have developed during their graduate education.
"You have acquired an awesome skill set that is much needed in the world. Be ready to pivot. While opportunities that come your may may be unexpected and you may need to follow a different path from the one you wrote about in your admissions essay. You will find a way."
Sheppard concluded by sharing words from actor Tom Hanks who said: "We all have special powers and abilities far beyond the reach of other mortals. Lean into your special powers. Use your special powers to make a difference."
Student Awards
During the ceremony, senior student awards recognizing scholarship, communication, leadership, and service were announced by Professor of Biostatistics Thomas R. Fleming.
- Zihang Yu, Senior Student Award, MS Capstone
- Jianan Pan, Senior Student Award, MS Thesis
- Marlena Bannick, Thomas R. Fleming Excellence in Biostatistics Award
- Yilin Song, Thomas R. Fleming Excellence in Biostatistics Award
- Leah Andrews, Exceptional Service Award
Award recipients are pictured with Department Chair Lurdes Inoue, Graduate Program Director Ken Rice, and Professor Thomas R. Fleming.
The School of Public Health Excellence Award winners for Biostatistics were also acknowledged during the program. Tengfei Cui received the Outstanding MS Student in Biostatistics award, and Yunhan Wu received the Outstanding PhD Student in Biostatistics award.
Class of 2025
Congratulations to all of our students completing degrees in 2025. Students who graduated from the Biostatistics MS Capstone program in 2025 were recognized in a ceremony held in May.
Master of Science Thesis
Lu Bai
- Program: MS Thesis
- Thesis: "Modeling the Effects of Personal Characteristics on Longitudinal Cognitive Performance and Its Variability: An Application to Multicultural Healthy"
- Advisor: Pam Shaw and Noorie Hyan
- Future Plans: PhD in Biostatistics, Colorado School of Public Health
Tengfei Cui
- Program: MS Thesis
- Thesis: "DAESC-GPU: A GU-powered Scalable Software for Single-cell Allele-specific Expression Analysis"
- Advisor: Guanghao Qi
- Future Plans: PhD, Department of Statistics, Texas A&M University
Charlotte Hong
- Program: MS Thesis
- Thesis: "Performance of Unsupervised Electronic Health Record-base Phenotyping Methods in Rare-outcome Settings"
- Advisor: Brian Williamson
- Future Plans: PhD in Biostatistics, Colorado Anshutz Medical Campus
Jianan Pan
- Program: MS Thesis
- Thesis: "Estimating HIV Cross-sectional Incidence Using Recency Tests from a Non-representative Sample"
- Advisor: Fei Gao
- Future Plans: PhD in Biomedical Data Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Zhilong Zhang
- Program: MS Thesis
- Thesis: "Applying Compositional Data Analysis Methods to Complete Blood-counts Data for Early COVID-19 Detection"
- Advisor: Jan Graffelman
- Future Plans: PhD, Department of Statistics, Texas A&M University
Doctor of Science
Leah Andrews
- Program: PhD
- Dissertation: "Statistical Methods for Assessing COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness and Immune Correlates in Test-Negative Design Studies"
- Advisor: Peter Gilbert
Marlena Bannick
- Program: PhD
- Dissertation: "Robust and Flexible Statistical Methods for Clinical Trials with Innovative and Practical Designs"
- Advisor: Ting Ye
Future Plans: Biostatistician, Seattle Children's; Working on early phase clinical trials for pediatric immunotherapies
Ruoyi Cai
- Program: PhD
- Dissertation: "Applications of Identity-by-descent Analysis in Population Genetics Research: Methods for Demographic History Inference and Genetic Association Analysis"
- Advisor: Sharon Browning
Future Plans: Postdoctoral Scholar in Cardiovascular Medicine, Stanford University
Nina Galanter
- Program: PhD
- Dissertation: "Topics in Causal Inference for Individualized Treatment"
- Advisors: Marco Carone and Alex Luedtke
- Future Plans: Postdoctoral Fellowship, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Michael Hellstern
- Program: PhD
- Dissertation: "Methods for Time Series Network Analyses"
- Advisor: Ali Shojaie
Nobuaki Masaki
- Program: PhD
- Dissertation: "Statistical Methods to Estimate Evolutionary and Technical Parameters Using Whole Genome Sequence Data"
- Advisor: Sharon Browning
- Future Plans: Research Associate, Imperial College, London
Antonio Olivas
- Program: PhD
- Dissertation: "Advances in Proximal Causal Inference for Continuous Exposures and Non-inferiority Assessment in Active-controlled Trials"
- Advisor: Andrea Rotnitzky
- Future Plans: Postdoctoral Researcher, Center for Causal Inference at the University of Pennsylvania
Yilin Song
- Program: PhD
- Dissertation: "The Instrumental Variable Model with Categorical Instrument, Exposure, and Outcome: Characterization, Partial Identification, and Statistical Inference"
- Advisors: Thomas Richardson and K.C. Gary Chan
- Future Plans: Postdoc, Columbia University
Yunhan Wu
- Program: PhD
- Dissertation: "Methods and Software for Small Area Estimation in Low- and Middle-Income Countries"
- Advisor: Jon Wakefield
- Future Plans: Postdoctoral Research Associate, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Kehao Zhu
- Program: PhD
- Dissertation: "Statistical Methods for Biomarker Research: Risk Prediction, Cancer Screening, and Sequential Decision"
- Advisors: Yingye Zheng and K.C. Gary Chan
- Future Plans: Senior Biostatistician, Natera
