We’re continuing to feature our 1st year doctoral students! We hope everyone is able to get to know this talented and diverse new group of students.
My name is Linda Harrison and I’m originally from the UK. I did a Math degree at Oxford, and afterwards wanted to apply what I learned to the real world. I was lucky to find the Medical Statistics masters at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The summer project from the masters lead me to HIV clinical trials and observational studies. I then spent several years with the UK Medical Research Council working on a national HIV observational study, as well as a number of pediatric clinical trials. At first it was challenging collaborating with the investigators, but I grew to love this part of the job. I was inspired to travel to Chiang Mai in Thailand to work on a local HIV cohort study, and subsequently came to the USA. I have spent the last 5 years working at the Center for Biostatistics in AIDS Research (CBAR). I finally decided to do a PhD. Mainly to gain a deeper understanding of Statistics and learn about the ever expanding field. I am very interested in clinical trial design, as well as nested case-control and case-cohort designs to efficiently use data and samples collected in large studies. Also, I’m interested to learn about statistical applications to newer areas like big data, genetics and computational biology. Outside of work I love playing badminton, going swimming, and always have a crochet, sewing or knitting project on the go.
I’m Molei Liu, coming from Beijing, China. Before enrolling the department of Biostatistics in Harvard, I was an undergraduate student from the Department of Statistics, the School of Mathematical Science in Peking University. In my first two year as an undergraduate student, I was trained mainly in pure math like calculus, algebra, and some advanced math theory. While in my third and forth year, I began to show interest in Probability, Statistics, and Biostatistics. I am particularly interested in Biostatistics because the combination of data analysis with biological or medical problems really interests me, and it can benefit our lives. In the past two years, I have been working on several research projects of Biostatistics, including joint modeling method for high dimensional longitudinal data and survival data, regression model based on generalized estimation equations for internal consistency measurement of test score data, new statistical model for single cell RNA sequencing data analysis, and study on genetics data of patients suffering cancer (more detailed information of these projects can be found in my CV). This summer, I begin to show interest in causal inference, and have began to study it. Presented in my previous research experience, statistical genetics problems also intrigue me a lot. What’s more, I’m particularly interested in analysis of electronic medical records (EMR). EMR presents challenge on data integration and big data analysis. Combating with this challenge could make me very fulfilled. Aside from Biostatistics, I’m interested in soccer, swimming and tennis very much. I’m also a guy who love delicious food, especially for Chinese hot pot.
