Department of Biostatistics
- About Us
- Faculty
- Courses
- Contact Info.
- Division of Biomedical Informatics
- Division of Cancer Biostatistics
- Applied Statistics Laboratory
Biostatistics is a discipline that develops and applies methodology for quantitative studies in public health and biomedical research. The methodology focuses on the design and analysis of health surveys, clinical trials, prevention trials, intervention studies, longitudinal studies, and laboratory studies.
The Biostatistics concentration provides students with a general background in public health and appropriate methodological skills to work in applied settings in industry, government, and academia. Graduates with this concentration will be prepared for careers in areas that include data management, SAS programming/data analyst, clinical trials, outcomes research, and program evaluation.
Address:
Suite 205, 725 Rose Street
Lexington, KY 40536-0082
Phone: 859-218-2097
Fax: 859-257-4665
Email: biostats@uky.edu
Chair:
Dr. Richard Kryscio
Phone: 859-257-4064
Support Staff:
Johanna Startzman
Phone: 859-218-2097/ 859-257-1412 Ext.477
Biomedical informatics (BMI) is the interdisciplinary, scientific field that studies and pursues the effective uses of biomedical data, information, and knowledge for scientific inquiry, problem solving and decision-making, motivated by efforts to improve human health. BMI is a meta-discipline, however, and does not exist by itself. Rather BMI builds on computing, communication and information sciences and technologies and their application in biomedicine. To that effect BMI can be viewed as a practical and applied discipline whose existence is intimately linked to current healthcare processes and whose intellectual products can have immediate benefit on healthcare and healthcare delivery. The new Division of Biomedical Informatics in the Department of Biostatistics in the College of Public Health represents the academic hub of BMI on the University of Kentucky Campus. The new Division will focus on the innovative uses of existing data and health information technology in supporting, public health, healthcare delivery and quality improvement activities while supporting research.
Faculty
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Dr. Todd Johnson
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Dr. Ramakanth Kavuluru
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Dr. Sujin Kim
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Dr. Lin Yang
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As a Division in the Department of Biostatistics, our overall mission is similar in spirit to the department but with a focus on cancer-related quantitative research. The primary thrusts of our faculty as academic biostatistician scientists are three-fold. We conduct innovative research across a broad array of statistical science applicable to cancer-related research ranging from traditional and adaptively designed clinical trials, to analysis of high-throughput microarray data, to design and analysis methods for behavioral and epidemiologic population-based cancer research studies. We collaborate with cancer researchers by applying modern statistical methods in both the design and analysis to address issues and problems related to cancer. We also play a key role in disseminating this knowledge not only through publication but through the classroom in our role of training and educating graduate students; the next generation of biostatisticians. A critical goal that is served by these three roles of scholarship, collaboration and service and education is to enable cancer researchers to make appropriate and efficient inference and interpretation of their work that will ultimately enable a decrease in cancer burden in Kentucky, the US, and throughout the world.
As part of the Markey Cancer Center (MCC) at the University of Kentucky, our goal is to foster collaborative interactions among cancer center members in the provision of scientific and statistical support in all aspects of cancer research. To this end, our primary goal is to provide readily accessible, comprehensive and centralized support to Cancer Center members. More information regarding our Biostatistics Shared Resource Facility (BSRF) can be found at http://markey.uky.edu/bsrf/.
Faculty
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Dr. Brent Shelton
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Dr. Emily Van Meter
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Dr. Bin Huang
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Dr. Heidi Weiss
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Dr. Li Chen
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Dr. Chi Wang
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Applied Statistics Laboratory (ASL)
The Department of Statistics with the support of the Department of Biostatistics, several Colleges, the Office of the Vice President for Research and the IT Academic Technology Group, has launched an Applied Statistics Laboratory (ASL) July 2011. The laboratory will provide a central location for Investigators and students seeking statistical support for study design and data analysis with scholarly work.
Its primary goals are:
- To provide direct faculty involvement from the Departments of Statistics and Biostatistics for study design and data analysis throughout the University.
- To provide improved statistical services to groups preparing grant proposals (in particular junior faculty and pilot studies).
- To provide a resource which may be referenced in institutional support for larger grant applications, in addition to direct statistical support typically included in such grants.
- To consolidate and enhance existing statistical support services, which are currently by their nature distributed in isolated locations. These services will be enhanced by (a) providing more efficient faculty supervision, and (b) allowing each individual currently served to have access to the full array of expertise available.
- To foster truly collaborative research between researchers who develop quantitative methodology and those who use such methodology in their work. This is intended to increase the number and quality of interdisciplinary scholarly articles and grant applications.
"We envision improved breadth and quality of statistical support for scholarship across the University," says Dr. Arne Bathke, Founding Director of the ASL, but he also points out that the services provided by the ASL will not substitute for basic statistical education that is provided in undergraduate and graduate Statistics service courses offered by the Departments of Statistics and Biostatistics.
Dr. Arnold Stromberg, Chair of the Statistics Department adds that "the intent of the ASL is not to alter the larger grant enterprise which is already under the supervision of faculty in Statistics or Biostatistics. Many projects will remain with their current reporting structure. The ASL is rather intended as an incubator for small to medium sized projects. The ASL will provide a central location where researchers can acquire their needed statistical support, with faculty supervision, and grow their projects into larger funded enterprises."
The Applied Statistics Laboratory will centralize statistical consulting activities on campus and provide the possibility of direct faculty supervision to the numerous activities already underway. Together with Director Arne Bathke, it will be led by Associate Directors Dr. Constance Wood, and Dr. Heather Bush. As in the past, ASL requests from the Colleges of Medicine, Dentistry, Health Sciences, and Public Health will continue to be overseen by Dr. Bush. The ASL will be managed by Candace Brancato, who formerly served as a senior statistician in the pharmaceutical industry. Two experienced M.S. statisticians (Adam Lindstrom and Jane Gokun), as well as several graduate students in Statistics and Biostatistics will help provide statistical support. The Directors have been involved in all levels of statistical consulting and collaboration from routine inquiries to serving as PI or co-PI on infrastructure and other grants. Two of the Directors have won the Provost's Award for Outstanding Teaching, and all have experience communicating statistical results to non-statisticians, including collaborative publications and grants. Their experience will be utilized to design experiments and analysis plans, to supervise graduate students performing analysis, and to review written final reports, including the preparation of abstracts, posters, presentations, publications, and grant submissions. For the most in depth analyses, their expertise will be used to either directly handle the consulting request or refer the request out of the ASL to a suitable faculty member in the departments of Statistics and Biostatistics. These types of referrals, involving complicated requests, often lead to interdisciplinary grant submissions and sustained research collaborations.
How can you use the ASL? You may submit a consultation request through the ASL website. Standard analyses will be supervised by faculty directors (or perhaps the affiliated faculty depending on the research area), while faculty directors will take an active role in more complex analyses. Other faculty members in the Department of Statistics and Biostatistics may also be enlisted in these analyses, encouraging the development of collaborative grant applications and sustained research collaborations. The faculty members of these departments have expertise in the full array of statistical methods, such as quality control, survival analysis, social science methods, multivariate methods, spatial statistics, nonparametric statistics, experimental design, Bayesian methods, computational statistics, phylogenetics, bioinformatics, and clinical trials.
For more information, please contact Candace Brancato at ASL@uky.edu
How much does it cost you? The ASL will function as a restricted "free access" statistical lab where faculty and graduate students can seek help with data analysis, statistical computing, and experimental design. These activities will be funded by the Department of Statistics, colleges, infrastructure grants, and the VPR.
In particular, colleges whose faculty wish to utilize the Laboratory services are asked to provide an appropriate amount of seed funding that will facilitate the handling of a certain capacity of routine requests from their faculty and graduate students. The Laboratory will track support and provide annual usage feedback to the participating colleges and the VPR. However, if the required analysis involves more than routine work, the client may be asked to initiate a direct research collaboration with an identified Statistics or Biostatistics faculty member. If the ASL resources are overwhelmed, an audit will be conducted to determine whether College contributions need to be adjusted to guarantee availability of service, or whether utilization needs to be reduced to a more manageable level.