This is our last group of 1st year doctoral students to introduce– we look forward to working with them all!
Hi, my name is Zebin Wang. I come from Zhejiang, China, and graduated from the Biostatistics Master of Science (ScM) program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Before that, I attended Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and obtained my bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. I began to study statistics when I was an undergraduate. I did most of my biostatistics-related research under the instruction of Dr. Daniel Scharfstein in JHU Biostatistics. We worked together on several different research topics, all of which closely related to clinical trial methodology. We first explored the application of neural networks for the analysis of randomized trials with non-monotone missing outcome data. In my Master’s thesis, I conducted a global sensitivity analysis for the PCORI-funded Asthma Research for the Community (ARC) randomized trial with a potentially informative assessment process. Additionally, I worked with Dr. Ellen MacKenzie and Craig Remenapp, the Senior Study Manager of the Major Extremity Trauma Research Consortium (METRC), on the possible survivability of fatal traumatic cases who died before reaching the hospital. I classified the cases by possible survivability under both ideal conditions and restored scenes where the fatal events had occurred based on medical reviewers’ assessments. I have also conducted some exploratory data analysis for these fatal cases on factors such as the type of injury, distance to the closest trauma center, comorbidities, etc. I hope that I could study further in the statistical methodology used in research fields such as clinical trial and epidemiology. I firmly believe that I could do something to help people fight against COVID-19. The Biostatistics PhD program here at Harvard has offered me a variety of opportunities, and I feel that I have found the right place to continue my academic pursuit. Apart from biostatistics, I enjoy playing soccer. I played as the starting goalkeeper of the soccer team of Fudan for more than three years. The best moment I have ever had in the team was to win a crucial game together with my teammates against one of our strongest rivals through a penalty shoot-out. I am also a huge fan of road trips, and I have managed to drive across five European countries (Germany, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands) in one day. I have traveled through more than 20 US states in roughly two years, and I hope to reach more when it is appropriate to do so.
Hi! My name is Yujie Wu and I am from Nanjing, China. I attended Southwest Jiaotong University for my undergraduate studies in Chengdu (a city renowned for the giant pandas and spicy food), majoring in statistics. After graduation, I joined the master’s program in biostatistics at Harvard. Over the past two years, I worked on two research projects. One is with Dr. Molin Wang on spline analysis of biomarker data pooled across multiple nested/matched case-control studies, and the other is with Dr. Giovanni Parmigiani and Dr. Boyu Ren on dealing with study-specific missing covariates in multi- study machine learning. My current research interests include multi-study machine learning, epidemiological methods such as measurement error and missing data problems. In my spare time, I am a big fan of Lego (though I spend 80% time saving money) and aviation such as aircrafts and airlines. I also enjoy exploring different restaurants in Allston (currently in the form of takeout).
Hi! My name is Daniel Xu, and I am from the suburbs of Philadelphia. I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019 from the Vagelos Program in Life Sciences & Management, where I studied both biophysics and statistics. Since graduation, I have spent the past year in consulting, advising healthcare and biopharmaceutical clients on various business problems from launching new drugs to forming new companies. During my time at Penn, I had the opportunity to conduct a wide variety of research – both in wet lab and dry lab settings. Most relevant to biostatistics, however, was my research experience with Dr. Ian Barnett. Under Dr. Barnett’s mentorship, I proposed a novel, non-negative variance estimator for the within-cluster resampling (WCR) and modified within-cluster resampling (MWCR) methods – two existing methods for analyzing longitudinal data. More importantly, I began to gain an appreciation for what it meant to actually conduct methodological statistical research – including coding simulations, thinking through proofs, and writing the paper itself. After taking a PhD-level statistics course on observational studies and longitudinal methods with Dr. Dylan Small and Dr. Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen, I started to become very interested in the application of statistics to clinical trials. In conjunction with my past experiences in healthcare, I recognized how statistics and the accurate interpretation of longitudinal data could be the deciding factor in whether a new therapy could be used to potentially save the lives of thousands. At Harvard, I hope to further deepen my interest in longitudinal methods, specifically with regards to clinical trials.
In my free time, I enjoy traveling, photography, and food. I also have a deep background in piano, so I hope to continue playing through chamber music!
