Education News
Significant Moments, 2022 Issue
In the fall of 2021, the Department of Biostatistics launched its newest major educational innovation: the Public Health Data Science Track for the MS in Biostatistics program. This program combines more traditional training in biostatistical theory, methods, and applications with principles of statistical learning and principles of data management. We are set to graduate our first cohort in the spring of 2023. Despite it being a new program, it has already become our second most popular MS track, with 51 students currently in their second year and 40 students now in their first year.
We are also proud to announce the launch of our Summer Institute for Training in Biostatistics and Data Science at Columbia (SIBDS@Columbia), which began in the summer of 2022. This initiative—supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and led by Department Chair Kiros Berhane and Professor Christine Mauro—recruits promising undergraduate students with diverse backgrounds nationally, who then spend seven weeks together on Columbia’s campus. This program runs synergistically with our department’s long-running BEST (Biostatistics and Epidemiology Summer Training) Diversity Program. The SIBDS program involves the training of participants in fundamental concepts of biostatistics and data science, computing skills, and hands-on biomedical data analysis. During the program, they work closely with faculty mentors on research projects, and then in the last week of the program they present their results in a poster session. In its first year, SIBDS@Columbia hosted eleven students from all over the country. We appreciate the efforts of all who participated in the program, with special thanks to Biostatistical faculty mentors Dan Malinsky, Qixuan Chen, Caleb Miles, Ying Wei, and Yifei Sun.