Yimei Li, Ph.D.

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Associate Professor of Biostatistics in Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Department: Biostatistics and Epidemiology

Contact information
Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics (DBEI)
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
626 Blockley
423 Guardian Drive
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Education:
B.S. (Applied Mathematics)
Peking University, China, 2006.
M.S. (Biostatistics, Advisor Justine Shults)
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 2008.
Ph.D. (Biostatistics, Advisor Daniel Heitjan)
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 2010.
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Description of Research Expertise

Dr. Li’s methodology research interests include clinical trial design, survival analysis, longitudinal data analysis, and statistical methods for health services research. Her earlier research focused on survival analysis, specifically statistical methodology for multivariate time-to-event data with alternating states and a possibility of cure. Recently, she has focused her research on statistical designs and analyses for early phase cancer clinical trials, such as Bayesian adaptive designs for dose-finding trials and platform/basket trials. Her collaborative research focuses on pediatric oncology, including basic and translational research to understand tumor biology, clinical trials to evaluate experimental cancer therapies (such as CAR-T immunotherapy), epidemiological studies using real world data (RWD) such as administrative database and electronic health records (EHR), and behavioral and psycho-social studies that aim to help oncology patients/families cope and adjust to their medical experience.

Dr. Li has extensive experience in design, conduct and analysis of various cancer studies, and have published over 180 articles in the literatures of statistical methodology, cancer research, and other areas of medicine. She has been recognized for her statistical expertise by appointments to several national committees, such as being a standing member on the NIH Clinical Oncology study section and a member on NRG Oncology Data Monitoring Committee. She is also on the editorial board of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and serve as a grant reviewer for multiple funding agencies and as a manuscript reviewer for many prestigious statistical and cancer journals.

Selected Publications

Li Y, Wileyto EP, Heitjan DF: Modeling smoking cessation data with alternating states and a cure fraction using frailty models. Statistics in Medicine 29(6): 627-638, Mar 2010.

Li Y, Wileyto EP, Heitjan DF: Prediction of individual long-term outcomes in smoking cessation trials using frailty models. Biometrics 67(4): 1321-1329, Dec 2011.

Li Y, Wileyto EP, Heitjan DF: Statistical analysis of daily smoking status in smoking cessation clinical trials. Addiction 106(11): 2039-2046, Nov 2011.

Li Y, Mick R, Heitjan DF: A Bayesian approach for unplanned sample size in phase II cancer clinical trials. Clinical Trials 9(3): 293-302, Jun 2012.

Li Y, Heitjan DF: A note on the complementary mixture Pareto II distribution. Communications in Statistics - Theory and Methods 42(2): 201-213, 2013.

Wileyto EP, Li Y, Chen J, Heitjan DF: Assessing the fit of parametric cure models. Biostatistics 14(2): 340-350, Apr 2013.

Li Y, Mick R, Heitjan DF: Suspension of accrual in phase II cancer clinical trials. Clinical Trials 12(2): 128-138, Apr 2015.

Li Y, Zhang Q: A Weibull multi-state model for the dependence of progression-free survival and overall survival. Statistics in Medicine 34(17): 2497-2513, Jul 2015.

Griffith SD, Shiffman S, Li Y, Heitjan DF: Model-based imputation of latent cigarette counts using data from a calibration study. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research 25(2): 112-22, Jun 2016.

Li Y, Hall M, Fisher BT, Huang YV, Seif AE, Bagatell R, Getz K, Alonzo TA, Gerbing RB, Sung L, Adamson PC, Gamis A, Aplenc R: Merging Children's Oncology Group data with an external administrative database using indirect patient identifiers: A report from the Children's Oncology Group. PLoS ONE 10(11): e0143480, Nov 2015.

Vujkovic M, Aplenc R, Alonzon TA, Gamis AS, Li Y: Comparing analytic methods for longitudinal GWAS and a case-study evaluating chemotherapy course length in pediatric AML. A report from the Children’s Oncology Group. Frontiers in Genetics 7: 139, Jul 2016.

Knafl GJ , Barakat LP, Hanlon AL, Hardie T, Knafl KA, Li Y, Deatrick J: Adaptive modeling: An approach for incorporating nonlinearity in regression analyses. Research in Nursing and Health 40(3): 273-282, Jun 2017.

Ying GS, Zhang Q, Lan Y, Li Y, Heitjan D: Cure modeling in real-time prediction: How much does it help? Contemporary Clinical Trials 59: 30-37, May 2017.

Li Y, Wang M, Cheung YK: Treatment and dose prioritization in early phase platform trials of targeted cancer therapies. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C (Applied Statistics) 68(2): 475-491, Feb 2019.

Li Y, Newton J, Getz KD, Huang YS, Seif AE, Fisher BT, Aplenc R, Winestone LE: Comparable on-therapy mortality and supportive care requirements in black and white patients following initial induction for pediatric acute myeloid leukemia. Pediatric Blood & Cancer 66(4): e27583, Apr 2019.

Zhu YQ, Hwang WT, Li Y**: Evaluating the effects of design parameters on the performances of phase I trial designs. Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications 15: 100379, May 2019 Notes: ** Ms. Zhu is a biostatistics graduate student and I was a lab rotation co-advisor and the senior author.

Li Y, Yuan Y: PA-CRM: A continuous reassessment method for pediatric phase I oncology trials with concurrent adult trials. Biometrics 76(4): 1364-1373, Dec 2020.

Bender S, Gamerman V, Reese P, Gray D, Li Y**#, Shults J#: The first-order Markov conditional linear expectation approach for analysis of longitudinal data. Statistics in Medicine 40(8): 1972-1988. Apr 2021 Notes: ** Dr. Bender was a biostatistics graduate student and I was a co-senior author. # Equal contribution.

Li Y*, Izem R: Novel clinical trial design and analytic methods to tackle challenges in therapeutic development in rare diseases. Annals of Translational Medicine 10(18): 1034, Apr 2022 Notes: *Being selected by the journal as one of the Outstanding Authors.

Blinder J, Huang YS, Rossano JW, Costarino AT, Li Y**: Variation in hospital costs and resource utilization after congenital heart surgery. Cardiology in the Young 33(3): 420-431, Mar 2023 Notes: ** Senior author.

Li Y, Hwang WT, Maude SL, Teachey DT, Frey NV, Myers RM, Leahy AB, Liu H, Porter DL, Grupp SA, Shaw P: Statistical considerations for time-to-event endpoints in oncology clinical trials: illustrations with CAR-T immunotherapy studies. Clinical Cancer Research 28(18): 3940-3949, Sept 2022.

Li Y, Sun L, Burstein DS, Getz K: Considerations of competing risks analysis in CardioOncology studies. JACC: CardioOncology 4(3): 287–301, Sept 2022.

Cao L, Huang YS, Wu C, Getz K, Miller TP, Fisher BT, Fisher B, Seif A, Aplenc R, Li Y **: Leveraging machine learning to identify acute myeloid leukemia patients in an administrative database. Pediatric Blood & Cancer 70(5): e30260, May 2023 Notes: ** Senior author.

Cao L, Huang YS, Getz K, Seif A, Ruiz J, Miller T, Fisher B, Aplenc R, Li Y**: Applying machine learning to identify pediatric patients with newly diagnosed acute lymphoblastic leukemia using administrative data. Pediatric Blood & Cancer 71(3): e30858, Mar 2024 Notes: ** Senior author.

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Last updated: 03/23/2024
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