2024 Biostatistics Student Awards
Columbia BMES Hacking Health 2024 Winners - Zhi Heng Shi, Xinyi Shang, Huachen Shan, and Siqi Wang won the grand prize for the healthcare hackathon. The theme for this year was "Patient Safety". Together, they worked on a new approach to Anti-Sepsis, through a A state-of-the-art app powered by a data science model, utilizing machine learning to monitor patients’ post-operative conditions with remarkable accuracy. You can read Huachen's description of their project here(link is external and opens in a new window).
Zhi Heng (Henry) Shi received the AI4Purpose Founders Award in Innovation for the recognition they received in many public health competitions this past year, as well as for the innovative solution "Anti-Sepsis for Infants and Moms (AIM)" they developed with their solution team XinYi Shang, SiQi Wang, and YiRun Wang. For the “Antisepsis for Infants and Moms” project, his team developed an AI-driven remote monitoring solution designed to detect early signs of maternal and neonatal sepsis. By integrating wearable technology and predictive analytics, the system continuously monitors critical health indicators such as temperature, heart rate, and respiratory patterns. This innovative approach aims to provide timely interventions, reduce the risk of complications, and enhance outcomes for mothers and infants during the perinatal and postpartum periods.
Amy Pitts was awarded a travel award by the Survey Research Methods Section(link is external and opens in a new window) to attend the 2024 Joint Statistical Meetings(link is external and opens in a new window) in Portland, Oregon. There, she won the Survey Research Methods Sections speed poster competition.
Zexi Cai won a Distinguished Student Paper Award for ENAR 2024 and presented his work at ENAR 2024.
Wenbo Fei won the JSM Student Paper Award from the ASA Medical Devices and Diagnostic Section and presented her work at JSM 2024. She also won a student paper award for the International Conference on Health Policy Statistics and will be presenting her work at the ICHPS 2025 in San Diego, CA.
ENAR Datafest 2024 - Yuying Wu and Yi Huang were selected as one of the top four teams in the ENAR DataFest 2024 for their project “Trends in Hypertension Control and Management Disparities in U.S. Adults: A NHANES Analysis from 1999-2020”, which they were then able to present at ENAR 2024
TRANSFORM TL1 Training Award - Elly Kipkogei won a TRANSFORM TL1 Doctoral Training Award and Yinjun Zhao won a TRANSFORM TL1 Postdoctoral Training Award. The TL1 Training Programs are intended to provide trainees with additional research training to prepare for a research career that can contribute in some meaningful way to understanding risk of disease, improving diagnosis and prevention, and tailoring treatment based on an individual’s variation in genes, environment, and/or lifestyle.
Biostatistics Department Teaching Assistant Awards - Zexi Cai won the PhD level award and Tvisha Devavarapu won the Masters level award. The Department Teaching Assistant awards are meant to recognize the excellent work of our teaching assistants who are vital to our department's work.
Biostatistics Department Doctoral Awards
The Sanford Bolton-John Fertig Award in Biostatistics
The Sanford Bolton-John Fertig Award in Biostatistics is awarded to the top doctoral dissertation in Biostatistics, in recognition of the strong influence John Fertig had on students through his encouragement, help, and outstanding teaching.
Jia Guo, PhD, for, “Computational Algorithms for Multi-omics and Electronic Health Records Data” under the dissertation advisement of Shuang Wang
"Jia’s dissertation, under Professor Shuang Wang’s supervision, focuses on the development of novel supervised and unsupervised learning methods, as well as their applications to EHR and multiomicsdata, with particular emphasis on early detection of clinical outcomes and identification of novel cancer subtypes. This work is admirably broad, systematic, and meticulously focused, and with extensive applications, in the spirit of the Sanford Bolton-John Fertig Award."
The Joseph L. Fleiss Memorial Prize in Biostatistics
The Joseph L. Fleiss Memorial Prize in Biostatistics is awarded to a Biostatistics student whose outstanding dissertation advances statistical methods and their applications to biomedicine and public health
Rebecca B. Silva, PhD, for, “Dose Optimization Methods for Novel Cancer” under the dissertation advisement of Shing Lee & Bin Cheng
"Rebecca, sponsored by Professors Shing Lee and Bin Cheng, focuses on dose-finding methods in early stagetrials for cancer therapy. She proposes two new broad-based design approaches which address the major challenge of dose-finding in the context of patient heterogeneity, which is often extensive but unknown at outset. In its innovation, methodological breadth, and wide applicability, this dissertation admirably advances the goals of the Joseph L Fleiss award."
Biostatistics Department Masters Awards
2024 Chair’s Award for Outstanding Master’s Student
Ziqing Wang, MS, for, “R implementation of a multistate approach for stochastic interventions on a time-to-event mediator in the presence of competing risks.” under the faculty advisement of Linda Valeri
"Ziqing has developed a new mediation function to handle time-to-event mediators for time-to-event outcomes. She provides details of how her estimator functions in her causal model; a simulation study using her newly created R function; and in the Conclusion an impressive interpretation for each of the effects, setting a foundation for future enhancements of causal mediation analysis."
Charles Chen, MS, for, “Evaluating the Performance of a Bayesian Model for the Analysis of Serial Dilution Immunoassays” under the faculty advisement of Qixuan Chen
"By demonstrating the advantages of a Bayesian approach over traditional calibration methods, especially in handling outliers and low detection limits, Charles’s research marks a contribution to the field of biostatistics and immunology. It stands out for its methodological rigor, relevance to public health, and potential to significantly impact allergen detection methods."
Zekai Jin, MS, for, “Mediation Analysis of Brain Connectivity and Apathy under Hierarchical Drift Diffusion Modeling” under the faculty advisement of Seonjoo Lee
"Zekaiexpertly hypothesizes that apathy in Parkinson’s disease patients is caused by abnormal changes in the brain, andmediated by decreased reward and effort sensitivities. He applies a sophisticated methodology to estimate these well-specified mediation effects, analyzing complex neurocognitive tasks and showing mastery of DTI neuroimaging data"