Biostatistics Key Personnel:

Dr. Madhu Mazumdar

Madhu Mazumdar, Ph.D., M.A., M.S., joined Weill Cornell Medical College in 2004 as Chief of the newly formed Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Department of Public Health, after serving 13 years at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center as Associate Attending Biostatistician. At MSKCC she collaborated extensively with clinical researchers in germ cell tumors, bladder cancer, radiology, and surgery; performed statistical research guided by these clinical collaborations; and led a group of masters statisticians. At WCMC, she has expanded her collaboration to other issues such as chronic kidney disease, therapeutic medical devices, thoracic surgery, and hematological oncology. She co-directs five courses in statistical software, introductory statistics, regression methodology, advanced statistical methods for observational studies, including meta-analysis, and nutritional epidemiology. She is a consultant statistical editor of Journal of Experimental Medicine, RU Press, and serves on various data safety monitoring boards. Her methodological research topics include:

• Design issues underlying strata-matched non-randomized comparative studies with survival outcome (Stat. in Med, 25, 3949-3959, 2006)
• Theoretical approach to choosing the minimum number of multiple tumors required for assessing treatment response. (Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 58(2):150-153, 2005)
• Power and Sample Size Calculation of Comparative Diagnostic Accuracy Studies with Multiple Correlated Test Results Biometrical Journal 47(2), 140-150, 2005)
• Comparison of therapeutic response criteria (WHO, RECIST) using statistical simulation (J Clin Epidemiol 57(4):358-65, 2004)
• Standard therapy outcome adjustment for the effect of patient distributions in cancer clinical trials (Stat in Med 20:883-892, 2001)
• Development of group sequential design for comparative diagnostic accuracy studies (Stat in Med, 22:727-739, 2003; Medical Decision Making, 24(5):525-533, 2004)
• Use of cluster analysis for discovering prognostic subgroups (J Clin Oncol, 21(14): 2679-88, 2003)
• Methodology for finding ‘optimal’ cutpoint for categorizing prognostic variables (Stat in Med 19:113-132; Neuroepidemiology 27(4):188-200, 2006)
• Modeling repeated measure of marker values and assessing their prognostic significance (J Clin Oncol 19:2534-2541, 2001)
• Critique/concern for dosing of Carboplatin in high-dose setting using Calvert’s formulae (J Natl Cancer Inst 92:1434-1436, 2000)
• Development of rank test for testing publication bias in meta-analysis (Biometrics 50:1088-1101, 2004)
• Inference on risk rates based on mortality data under censoring and competing risks using parametric models (Biometrikal J 34:315-328., 1992)
  Dr. Mazumdar's CV

Linda Gerber, Ph.D., Epidemiologist, is Director of the Biostatistics and Research Methodology Core and Professor of Public Health in the Department of Public Health. She is also Professor of Epidemiology in Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Gerber is a national expert in hypertension research who has investigated the relationship between psychological characteristics and responses to antihypertensive drug therapy, as well as the role of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and behavioral and genetic factors on diurnal blood pressure patterns. Dr. Gerber has collaborated as an epidemiologist and medical anthropologist in a variety of clinical epidemiological research projects. In particular, she was the Principal Investigator on the Neighborhood Study, a National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI)-funded study which investigated the relationship of ethnicity, socioeconomic status and sleep patterns on diurnal blood pressure rhythms. Currently, Dr. Penny Feldman (of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York) and Dr. Gerber are collaborating on a major study funded by the NHLBI to improve hypertension management and blood pressure control in an African American home care population. Dr. Gerber has also been awarded Task Order Number 13, titled "Effect of the Patient Activation Measure (PAM) on Chronic Care" as part of the Integrated Delivery System Research Network of the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. This task order explores whether a PAM-driven intervention increases patients’ knowledge and self-management behaviors and whether this intervention improves the blood pressure levels of hypertension patients. The research team has developed a “change package” of evidence-based hypertension management strategies geared to patients scoring at the four different stages of activation on the Patient Activation Measure. Groups have been randomly assigned in a managed long-term care plan to intervention or control status and care managers on the intervention teams have been trained to use the change package in conjunction with a patient’s PAM score to design – with the involvement of the patient – an individualized hypertension management plan. The impact of the intervention on patient activation and outcomes are being assessed. Dr. Gerber's CV

Heejung Bang, Ph.D., M.S., Biostatistician and Assistant Professor of Public Health, received her Ph.D. in Statistics from the North Carolina State University. Her dissertation was titled, “Problem of censored medical cost data.” Afterward, as a post-doctoral research fellow in the departments of biostatistics and epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, she was involved in developing statistical methodology in the area of survival and missing data analysis with direct applications to an HIV/AIDS clinical trial in Tanzania. In 2001, she was a recipient of a young investigators award in the Statistics in Epidemiology Section at the Joint Statistical Meetings hosted by the American Statistical Association. Then she served as a faculty member at the Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for three years. She participated in three large-scale multi-center clinical trials and a large community based cohort study in cardiovascular diseases, all funded/sponsored by NIH. Throughout her training and professional experiences, she dealt with various aspects in trials as well as observational studies, identified statistical issues, and solved some important problems related to blinding in randomized clinical trials, imputation of missing data, and identifying changepoint through segmented regression modeling. At Weill Cornell Medical College, she is collaborating with clinical researchers in the fields of HIV/AIDS, diabetes, heart disease, and neurological disorders. Her methodological research topics include:

• Medical cost and other censored data ( Biometrika 2000; Biometrics 2002; J Int Marketing 2005; Contemp Clin Trials 2005; Stat in Med 2007 )
• Blinding and noncompliance in clinical trials (Controlled Clin Trials 2004, 2005; Stat in Med 2007. NOTE: Blinding Index is built in Stata)
• Multiple testing, Sample size calculation, Microarray (Biostatistics 2005; Science 2004; J Biopharm Stat 2005)
• Causal inference and nonrandomized treatment (Biometrics 2005; Stat in Med 2008)
• Biostatistics tutorial (Neuroepidemiology 2006)
• Disease prediction models (in kidney disease and diabetes, see below)
• HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases (J of AIDS 2002; AIDS 2002; Biostatistics 2002; J Infect Dis 2007; Clin Infect Dis 2007)
• Cardiovascular disease (Circulation 2004; Am J Med 2005; Arch Int Med 2005; Am J Cardiology 2008; Ann Epi 2008)
• Diabetes (Diabetes 2004; Diabetes Care 2005; Diabetologia 2007)
• Kidney disease (Am J Kid Dis 2005; Arch Int Med 2007, 2008)
• Neurology (Stroke 2005; Neurology 2006, 2007; Atherosclerosis 2008)
• OB-GYN (JCEM 2006; Fertility and Sterility 2006; Oncologist 2007)
• Prevention science (Addictive Behaviors 2007; Prev Sci 2007)
• Meta-analysis (J Family Pract 2007; STD 2007)
  Dr. Bang's CV

Xi Kathy Zhou, Ph.D., M.S., is an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics in the Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Department of Public Health. Dr. Zhou joined the faculty at Cornell from the Genomic Institute of Novartis Research Foundation in San Diego, where she served as a biostatistician and participated in many interesting projects related to the pharmacology of drugs. She holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University and has significant experience in analyzing and modeling complex genomic data. At Weill Cornell Medical College, she is collaborating with clinical researchers in the fields of oncology with classification problems and with behavioral scientists for modeling moderation effects of competence skills on alcohol use among inner-city adolescents. She utilized regression tree method to create decision rules for classification of renal tumors based on the mRNA expression ratios and used hierarchical regression model to establish the protective effect of competence skills. She also mentors graduate students with design of their experiments and data analysis and teaches in the biostatistics course for the graduate school. Dr. Zhou's CV

Paul J. Christos, M.S., M.P.H., Lecturer, received his Masters (M.S.) in Biostatistics and Masters (M.P.H.) in Epidemiology from the New York Medical College School of Public Health in 1995 and is currently pursuing a doctorate in epidemiology at the New York Medical College School of Public Health. Prior to joining Weill Cornell Medical College in January 2000, Mr. Christos worked as a biostatistician and epidemiologist at Strang Cancer Prevention Center, and later as a biostatistician in the Dermatology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. During this time he also served as an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Public Health, Weill Medical College, and in the Department of Health Quantitative Sciences, New York Medical College, where he taught introductory epidemiology and biostatistics to medical students and graduate students.

Mr. Christos has collaborated with nearly all of the academic departments at Weill Medical College, providing statistical analyses, sample size/power calculations, assistance with the design of studies, and assistance with manuscript preparation and submission. As a result of these consultations and collaborations, Mr. Christos has coauthored numerous publications (specifically with a strong focus in cancer research). Examples of his current work include the provision of statistical services to a multi-institutional Phase II Clinical Trial Consortium (for NCI submissions and/or manuscript submission to scientific publications), as well as extensive collaborations with the Breast Center and the Division of Hematology and Oncology.

Yolanda Barrón, M.S., Senior Research Biostatistician, received her Masters in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1993. Prior to joining Weill Cornell Medical College in April 2005, Ms. Barrón worked as a biostatistician at the Wilmer Eye Institute in Johns Hopkins, and later as a statistical programmer in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she collaborated with investigators from the Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS), a multicenter cohort study of the natural history of HIV-1 infection in women in the United States. At Weill Cornell Medical College, Ms. Barrón is collaborating with Drs. Lisa Kern and Rainu Kaushal from the Division of Outcomes and Effectiveness Research, analyzing the effects of Electronic Health Records (EHR), and specifically laboratory result viewing, on quality of care, including preventive care, chronic disease management, and patient satisfaction, on a group of primary care physicians (PCPs) in the Taconic IPA in New York. She worked with Drs. Tabaee, Anand and Schwartz from the Departments of Otolaryngology and Neurosurgery in a systematic review and meta-analysis of the results from nine papers published or submitted on the outcomes and complications of endoscopic pituitary surgery. Ms. Barrón is currently working with Dr. Heejung Bang in applications of marginal structural models to estimate the effect of anti-depression medication use in the survival of patients with coronary heart disease. She also is collaborating with Dr. Linda Gerber in the analysis of a longitudinal multilevel study on the effect of the Patient Activation Measure on chronic care of patients with hypertension. Ms. Barrón collaborated with Dr. Madhu Mazumdar in the design and teaching of the course "Biostatistics in Clinical Research" for the Masters Program in Clinical Investigation. Ms. Barrón's CV

Ya-Lin Chiu, M.S., Research Biostatistician, received her Masters in Statistics from Colorado State University in 1998. She has over nine years of experience in statistical analysis in HIV-1 vaccine clinical trials and animal studies. Since joining the Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in January 2008, she has provided statistical support to various researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College through her role in the Biostatistics and Research Methodology Core and the Clinical and Translational Science Center. The researchers she assists are from numerous departments, including cancer prevention, hematology-oncology, and anesthesiology.

Quan Hong Ni, M.S., Research Biostatistician, received her Masters in Statistics from the University of Houston, Texas, in 2004. At Weill Cornell Medical College she assists investigators in sample size/power analysis, statistical analysis/modeling, survival analysis, etc. Due to her strong programming skills, she is also involved in designing databases and generating research data sets from multiple clinical databases.

John Rutledge, M.A.S., Research Biostatistician, received his Masters in Applied Statistics from the Pennsylvania State University in 2004. Since joining the Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in January of 2005, he has provided statistical support to researchers at both Weill Cornell Medical College and Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences through his role in the Biostatistics and Research Methodology Core. These researchers are from numerous departments, including Reproductive Medicine, Otorhinolaryngology, Radiology, Neuron-oncology, Nephrology, and Anesthesiology. Mr. Rutledge has been involved in all aspects of clinical research, such as study design, data analysis, and manuscript preparation.

In addition, Mr. Rutledge is involved in data management for a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded clinical trial in Haiti investigating the efficacy of early versus standard antiretroviral therapy in HIV-infected adults with CD4+ T-cell counts between 200 and 350 cells/mm^3. He has also begun involvement in a multi-center clinical trial investigating the difference in surgery times between two types of surgical procedures used in the treatment of rectal cancer.

Community and Public Health Programs

Health Policy

Medical Ethics

Outcomes and Effectiveness Research

Prevention and Health Behavior

Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology Activities: