Biostatistics Branch
Current Fellows
Meet the current fellows in the Biostatistics Branch and learn about current research training opportunities.
Simina Boca, Ph.D. - Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Simina Boca joined the Biostatistics Branch (BB) of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology (DCEG) in October 2011 as a postdoctoral fellow. Her mentors are Dr. Joshua Sampson and Dr. Nilanjan Chatterjee. Dr. Boca received her Ph.D. in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins University in 2011, under the mentorship of Giovanni Parmigiani and Jeffrey T. Leek. Her doctoral work concerned the development of statistical methods for set-level inference in high-dimensional data, with her primary area of scientific interest being cancer genomics. She also conducted research in population genetics. For her postdoctoral fellowship, she is further pursuing her interest in the analysis of “omics” data, including metabolomics and genome-wide association studies.
DCEG Publications (text and abstracts from our publications database)
Xing Hua - Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Xing Hua joined the Biostatistics Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG) as a postdoctoral fellow in April 2013. Dr. Hua worked in the department of physiology and cancer center of Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) as a visiting scholar from 2011 and received his Ph.D. degree in statistics from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2012. His Ph.D. thesis focused on developing statistical methods and algorithms for analyzing cancer genome sequencing data, including calling somatic mutations and detecting driver genes. Dr. Hua is now working with Dr. Jianxin Shi on developing methods for driver gene detection across cancer sites, detecting mutations affecting survival and performing statistical analysis of lung cancer tumor sequencing data.
DCEG Publications (text and abstracts from our publications database)
Stephanie Kovalchik, M.S., Ph.D. - Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Stephanie Kovalchik joined the Biostatistics Branch in March 2011. Her mentors are Dr. Hormuzd Katki and Dr. Ruth Pfeiffer. Her dissertation research concerned statistical issues in estimating treatment and patient factor interactions with meta-analysis. Her dissertation adviser was Dr. William G. Cumberland, and her doctoral training was supported by an NIH training grant for Biostatistics of HIV/AIDS research. Dr. Kovalchik’s main research interests include subgroup analysis, hierarchical modeling, meta-analysis and comparative effectiveness research. She received a B.S. in Biology from the California Institute of Technology in 2003, a M.S. in Biostatistics in 2006 and Ph.D. in Biostatistics in 2010 from the University of California, Los Angeles.
DCEG Publications (text and abstracts from our publications database)
Paige Maas - Predoctoral Fellow
Paige Maas joined the Biostatistics Branch in the fall of 2009 as the first participant in the Biostatistics in Cancer Epidemiology Predoctoral Training Program, a partnership between the National Cancer Institute and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She received a degree in Applied Mathematics and minors in Biology and Psychology from Pomona College in 2009. Her research interests are still developing and include longitudinal data analysis, regression modeling, and survival analysis. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and will begin working on statistical research projects at the National Cancer Institute in the summer of 2010.
DCEG Publications (text and abstracts from our publications database)
Orestis Panagiotou, M.D. - Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Orestis Panagiotou, M.D., joined the Biostatistics Branch, DCEG in January 2013. Originally from Ioannina, Greece, he completed his primary and secondary education in Greece and Germany. He graduated with an M.D. degree from the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in July 2009 and subsequently pursued his Ph.D. in genetic epidemiology there, with his thesis advisor, John Ioannidis. Dr. Panagiotou's Ph.D. training, funded by the 7th Framework Program of the European Union, included several aspects of epidemiology, including genomic and molecular epidemiology, risk prediction, clinical trials and meta-analysis/meta-epidemiology. Currently, he is working under the mentorship of Dr. Sholom Wacholder, Ph.D., Senior Investigator, on addressing methodological questions pertaining to the epidemiology of lung, cervical and liver cancers. Dr Panagiotou is open to collaborations with investigators from other DCEG branches on projects related to the genetic and molecular etiology of cancer as well as implementation of research findings into clinical practice.
DCEG Publications (text and abstracts from our publications database)
Minsun Song, Ph.D. - Postdoctoral Fellow
Minsun Song, Ph.D., joined the Biostatistics Branch in June 2012 as a visiting fellow. Dr. Song received B.S. in Statistics from Seoul National University, M.S. in Statistics from Seoul National University, and Ph.D. in Statistics from University of Chicago. During her Ph.D., she worked on statistical methods for testing gene-gene interaction under inequality constraints for both typed and untyped SNPs under the supervision of Prof. Dan Nicolae. After that, she worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University. Her research at Princeton University involved modeling and testing associations under the presence of arbitrary population structure. She is working under Dr. Nilanjan Chatterjee, Chief of Biostatistics Branch, developing statistical methodologies for a powerful test of goodness-of-fit under the logistic model framework and for test and inference of genetic and environmental effects for untyped SNPs in a two-stage framework, where in the first stage the missing values are imputed and then the tests are performed on the imputed values.
DCEG Publications (text and abstracts from our publications database)
Jincao Wu, Ph.D. - Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Jincao Wu joined the Biostatistics Branch in September 2011 as a visiting fellow. Her mentors are Dr. Mitchell Gail and Dr. Ruth Pfeiffer. Dr. Wu received her Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of Michigan. Her thesis focuses on developing Bayesian models to predict patients’ clinical outcome or survival using high-dimensional brain imaging data. Currently, her research involves building risk prediction models based genotypic data in the genome-wide association studies, developing imputation methods to handle missing data in breast cancer case-control studies and developing methodologies for model selection and data de-noising in the study of mass spectrometry data.
DCEG Publications (text and abstracts from our publications database)
Han Zhang, Ph.D. - Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Han Zhang joined the Biostatistics Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG) as a visiting fellow in August 2011. Dr. Zhang received Ph.D. degree in statistics from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). His Ph.D. thesis focused on developing algorithms for haplotype analysis under pooling and individual design. He is now working with Dr. Kai Yu on the statistical approaches for rare variants association analysis and gene-gene interaction analysis in case-control studies.
DCEG Publications (text and abstracts from our publications database)
Learn about current research training opportunities in the Biostatistics Branch.