Blog

The Statistical Computing Series hosted by Vanderbilt University Medical Center's Department of Biostatistics features presentations on the implementation of statistical models and methods, statistical computation, and graphics. These informal meetings allow experienced statisticians and developers to share their expertise on computing topics with practitioners across Vanderbilt. On Thursday, January 30, 2025, at 1:30 pm Central Time on Teams, assistant professor Panpan Zhang will present "Creating a Personal Website with GitHub." Here is his description:

I will introduce some fundamental techniques for creating a GitHub website with JekyII. A few examples will be presented. A template, together with a detailed README demonstration, will be shared on github.com/vubiostat.

For access to this webinar, contact series organizer Ryan Moore.

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. 

We are pleased to announce the promotion of Lauren "Laurie" Samuels to research associate professor, effective January 1. Dr. Samuels earned her bachelor's degree in religious studies at Yale University, enrolling at Vanderbilt after seven years in the workforce for an MEd in secondary education. After serving in Americorps, tutoring Bowie Reading and Learning Center students in math and science, and supporting Vanderbilt's Center for Evaluation and Program Improvement as a research assistant, data manager, and SAS programmer, Dr. Samuels joined our doctoral program and graduated with her PhD in 2017. 

Since her initial appointment as a research instructor in 2017 and subsequent promotion to research assistant professor in 2018, Dr. Samuels has proven herself to be a valuable, versatile, and highly engaged collaborator on both research investigations and pedagogical initiatives. She is co-investigator on two R01-funded projects led by Dr. Bill Heerman, "COACH: Competency Based Approaches for Community Health" and "The ADAPT Trial: Adapting Evidence-Based Obesity Interventions in Community Settings"; first author of papers in Statistics in Medicine and Observational Studies; and a current participant in the Fleming Society Academy for Excellence in Education Mentorship Program. As a passionate advocate for health equity, Dr. Samuels is a leader of the department's Ethical Responsibilities Regarding Race in Research working group and presented "Keeping up with changing understandings of sex, gender, race, and ethnicity" as an invited speaker at the International Conference on Health Policy Statistics.

Congratulations to 2024 graduate Jamie Joseph, PhD, on the publication of "Analysis of longitudinal patterns of child maltreatment reports in the United States," which was published online ahead of print on December 24; it is scheduled to appear in the February 2025 issue of Child Abuse & Neglect. Associate professor Rameela Raman is senior and corresponding author of this paper. Co-authors include researchers at Northwestern, University of Kentucky, Vanderbilt's Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Vanderbilt Center for Excellence for Children in State Custody. 

Dr. Joseph, Dr. Raman, and their collaborators used National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) data to quantify geographic variation in child maltreatment rate trajectories, with the larger goal of helping states "identify local risk factors to guide program development and resource allocation." The team found "three groups of states with distinct child maltreatment trajectories, with majority of the states following a stable trajectory over time. There was not a consistent trend in socioeconomic characteristics between the three groups. While the results do not allow us to draw firm conclusions about socioeconomic characteristics associated with maltreatment trajectories, it does provide data-driven evidence for the existing assumption of a national average maltreatment trajectory."

Dr. Joseph is now a biostatistics faculty member at Henry Ford Health. Dr. Raman recently chaired the department's 2024 retreat and served as the American Statistical Association's Middle Tennessee representative to the Council of Chapters the past two years. For more about Dr. Raman's mentoring of Dr. Joseph, see the May 2023 thank-you note from Dr. Joseph published in AmStatNews.

Figure 2 from Joseph et al., "Analysis of longitudinal patterns of child maltreatment reports in the United States." State-level chloropeth map using the three unique trajectories obtained from the latent trajectory model.