We are pleased to announce the promotion of Xiangyu Ji to senior biostatistician, effective January 3. Ji earned her Bachelor of Science degree in public health from California State University Los Angeles, with a data management internship at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine prior to graduation. As a student in our master's program, Ji wrote her thesis, "Evaluating uses of machine learning in propensity score estimation on time-to-event data: A simulation study," under the supervision of Amber Hackstadt. As a staff biostatistician, her primary collaboration is with the Vanderbilt Eye Institute / Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, where her activities have included planning and conducting process standardization for resident research projects, including drafting project roadmaps, creating administrative file templates, and developing data entry protocols. She has also provided biostatistical support to the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, in the Department of Medicine; the Department of Biomedical Informatics; and Vanderbilt Orthopaedics. She has co-authored peer-reviewed publications in BMC Ophthalmology, Journal of the Academy of Ophthalmology, Thyroid, Ophthalmology, OSLI (Ophthalmic Surgery, Lasers and Imaging) Retina, and JAMA Ophthalmology, with five additional manuscripts under revision or review, all in collaboration with professor Cindy Chen. Ji's service includes volunteering for the 2024 International Chinese Statistical Association Applied Statistics Symposium.
