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Personnel

Statisticians with involvement in UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center projects can be categorized in the following manner:

  • Principal statisticians have UNC Lineberger member research as their focus
  • Consulting statisticians receive some funding support from UNC Lineberger
  • Specialist statisticians do not receive UNC Lineberger funding

Funding for any statistical effort is strongly encouraged!

Advice on how to include a statistician (or statisticians) on a grant and for how much is readily available. Email the BIOS SR at: LCCC_BIOS@med.unc.edu

Principal Statisticians

Joseph G. Ibrahim, PhD, is the Faculty Director and the Alumni Distinguished Professor in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health Department of Biostatistics and is a UNC Lineberger member.. Dr. Ibrahim is the statistical director of the Breast SPORE. He directs the UNC Center for Innovative Clinical Trials, the Cancer Genomics Training Grant and is PI of a statistical P01 grant titled “Statistical Methods in Cancer Clinical Trials.” Dr. Ibrahim provides expertise in the areas of clinical trials, Bayesian methods, missing data problems, computational biology, melanoma and gastrointestinal cancer. In his Bayesian methodological research, he has made significant contributions to prior elicitation, model selection, and Bayesian computation.

Dominic T. Moore, MPH, MS, is the Facility Director and a Senior Biostatistician. He is the longest serving member of the BIOS SR and serves as the resource allocator in that he looks to optimally match statisticians to UNC Lineberger projects. His research areas of interest include clinical trials methodology, robust methods using minimal assumptions, decision theory, visualization, and other aspects of quantitative thinking and communication.

Allison M. Deal, MS, is a Senior Biostatistician who has interest and expertise in survey research and other population sciences study methods. Ms. Deal also has significant collaborations in clinical research involving melanoma, breast, gastrointestinal, and head and neck cancers.

Naim Rashid, PhD, is a Research Associate Professor at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health Department of Biostatistics and is a UNC Lineberger member. His main areas of expertise and research interests are in statistical genetics, genomics, and proteomics.

Xianming Tan, PhD, is a Research Associate Professor at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health Department of Biostatistics and is a UNC Lineberger member. His research areas of interest include statistical methods particularly useful to population sciences and clinical research.

Ally Wardell, MS, is a Biostatistician who has interest and expertise in survey research, basic sciences research methods, and statistical programming. She has extensive experience with research concerning IVF outcomes, particularly fertility preservation before and after cancer. She is currently the BIOS SR liaison with the Clinical Data Management Group at UNC  Lineberger.

Laura Farnan, PhD, is a Biostatistician who has expertise in database design and documentation and has been involved in the oversight of data monitoring and quality control. She is particularly proficient with projects involving very large data sets, including cancer research studies utilizing Electronic Records Solutions and UNC Lineberger Cancer Cohort Data.

Yusha Liu, PhD, is a Research Assistant Professor at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health Department of Biostatistics and is a UNC Lineberger member. Her primary interest is in the statistical modeling of high-throughput genomics data, and in particular, cancer single cell data.

Consulting Statisticians

J S Marron, PhD, is the Amos Hawley Distinguished Professor in the UNC Department of Statistics (with a joint appointment in Biostatistics). He was listed in the November, 2002 Amstat News as one of the most highly cited statisticians in the world. Dr Marron has been working actively on statistical genomics research with Drs Perou, Thomas, and Dittmer as well as with colleagues in the Department of Genetics.

Anastasia Ivanova, PhD, is a Professor in UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health Department of Biostatistics and is a UNC Lineberger member. Dr. Ivanova is an internationally known expert in clinical trial design including dose-finding studies and response-adaptive randomization designs and is the author of software useful in the design of phase 1 and 2 studies.

Bahjat Qaqish, MD, PhD, is a Professor in UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health Department of Biostatistics. His methodology research interests include survival analysis, correlated and longitudinal data, and case-control studies. He has worked extensively on various aspects of regression models for correlated binary outcomes. His current research interests also include clinical trial design, computational biology, and computational methods.

Specialist Statisticians

Donglin Zeng, PhD, is a Professor in UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Department of Biostatistics and Co-Director of the Carolina Survey Research Laboratory and is a UNC Lineberger member.. Dr. Zeng’s interest is in the theoretical development methods for semi-parametric inference and high dimensional data, with application to cancer survival data, longitudinal data cancer studies, breast cancer image diagnostics and some genetic studies.

Andrew Nobel, PhD, is a Professor in UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Department of Biostatistics and UNC Department of Statistics and Operations Research and is a UNC Lineberger member. His research interests include the statistical analysis of genomic data.