Alumni
Recent Graduates
2026
Kelli Williams
Post-doctoral Fellow, UMass Amherst
Dissertation Advisor: Aimin Chen, MD, PhD
The Impact of Flame-Retardant Exposure on Sleep Health, IQ, Neurobehavior, and Effect Modification by Social Determinants of Health in Children
Julia DiTosto
Real World Evidence Scientist, Merck
Dissertation Advisor: Ellen Caniglia, ScD
2025
Dominique Medaglio
Manager, Epidemiology and Real-World Data Sciences, J&J
Dissertation Advisor: Robert Gross, MD, MSCE
The Impact of Drug-Nicotine Interactions on Smoking-Related Outcomes
Chris Miller
Director of Regulatory Clinical and Nonclinical Strategy, Pacira Biosciences
Dissertation Advisor: John Farrar, MD, PhD
Methods for Estimating Analgesic Efficacy in Acute Pain Clinical Trials
Danielle Kellier
Resident, Boston Children's Hospital
Dissertation Advisors: Christina L. Szperka, MD, MSCE; John Farrar, MD, PhD
Social Disparities in Healthcare Utilization for Children and Adolescents with Migraine Disease
Kira Nightingale
Post-doctoral fellow, Jefferson University
Dissertation Advisor: Elizabeth Lowenthal, MD, MSCE
Addressing Complexities of Implementing the Revised Infant Feeding Guidelines for Perinatally HIV Exposed Infants in the United States
2024
Emily Acton
MD Student
Dissertation Advisor: Scott Kasner, MD, MSCE
Harnessing Real-World Data to Assess Drug-Drug and Higher-Order Interactions of Antiseizure Medications and Direct-Acting Oral Anticoagulants
Bernadette D'Alonzo
Postdoctoral Fellow, UPenn
Dissertation Advisors: Doug Wiebe, PhD & Andrea Schneider, MD, PhD
Identifying factors that relate to recovery among collegiate athletes with sport-related concussion
Tuhina Srivastava
Research Scientist, University of Washington
Dissertation Advisors: Melanie Kornides, ScD, MSN
Associations Between Neighborhood Vulnerability and Vaccine Uptake in Philadelphia, PA
2023
Brinkley Raynor
VMD student, UPenn
Dissertation Advisor: Ricardo Castillo, PhD
Epidemiology and control of canine rabies in heterogeneous population
Stephanie Teeple
MD Student, UPenn
Dissertation Advisor: Scott Halpern, MD, PhD
Missingness and Equity ofClinical Model PredictivePerformance: Considering theSocial Construction of EHR Dat
2022
Alexa Woodward
Partnership and Strategy, Optum Clinicogenomics
Dissertation Advisor: Li Shen, PhD
Capturing complex patterns ofassociation in genetic data: arule-based machine learningapproach to survival analysis
Neil Dhopeshwarkar
Senior Principal Research Scientist, TriNetX
Dissertation Advisor: Charlie Leonard, PharmD, PhD
Bleeding with concomitant ibrutinib and oral anticoagulant therapy: A population-based cohort study
Erin Schnellinger
Biostatistician, United Network for Organ Sharing
Dissertation Advisor: Stephen Kimmel, MD, MSCE
Selection Bias in Lung Allocation: Influence on Lung Allocation Score and Physician Decision Making
Jing Zhang
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Dissertation Advisor: Jennifer Pinto-Martin, PhD, MPH; Maja Bucan, PhD
Exploring the Genetic Architecture of Autism Spectrum Disorder
2021
Tara Kligner
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Advisor: Elizabeth Lowenthal, MD, MSCE
Preparing for Use of a Computerized Battery to Identify Neurocognitive Impairments Among Children and Adolescents Affected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus in Botswana
Amelia van Pelt
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Advisor: Elizabeth Lowenthal, MD, MSCE
Preparing for Use of a Computerized Battery to Identify Neurocognitive Impairments Among Children and Adolescents Affected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus in Botswana
Darcy Ellis
Epidemiologist, CSL Behring
Dissertation Advisor: Sean Hennessy, PhD, PharmD
"Neurologic and Metabolic Safety of Fluoroquinolones"
Jessica Meeker
Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, CDC
Dissertation Advisor: Mary Regina Boland, PhD
"Investigating the Effect of Individual-Level and Neighborhood-Level Exposures on Delivery Outcomes"
Sherrie Xie
VMD student, University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Advisor: Blanca Himes, PhD
"Investigating the Effect of Individual-Level and Neighborhood-Level Exposures on Delivery Outcomes"
2020
Sondra Lavigne
VMD student, University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Advisor: Theoklis Zaoutis, MD, MSCE
"AntiMicrobial Use and Resistance: Intersections of Companion Animal and Public Health"
2019
M. Elle Saine
MD Student, University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Advisor: Vincent Lo Re, MD, MSCE
"Measuring Disease-Related Stigma Among Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C Virus Infection"
Tirza Calderone
Epidemiology Manager, GlazoSmithKline
Dissertation Advisors: Alison Buttenheim, PhD, MBA & Kristen Feemster, MD, MPH, MSHP
"Addressing Disparities in Pertussis Epidemiology"
Todd Miano
Instructor of Epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Advisor: Sean Hennessy, PharmD, PhD
"Drug-Drug Interactions and Kidney Disease in Hospitalized Patients"
Alexis Zebrowski
Research Assistant Professor, Thomas Jefferson University
Dissertation Advisor: Douglas Wiebe, PhD
"Intensity of Care and the Injured Older Adult: Measurement, Variability, and Outcomes Using Medicare Claims Data"
Meijia Zhou
Manager, Johnson & Johnson
Dissertation Advisor: Sean Hennessy, PharmD, PhD
"Identifying Signals of Potential Drug-Drug Interactions Involving Oral Anticoagulants Using Real World Clinical Data"
Where do Biostatistics graduates go? Many go on, either directly or following a postdoctoral position, to academic careers. Others play a major role in biotechnology, pharmaceutical companies or government. Training in biostatistics can prepare you for many other walks of life. Below is a list of some recent graduates and their accomplishments.
2025
Jeremy Rubin, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Maryland College Park
Dissertation Advisor: Jarcy Zee, PhD
"Statistical Methods for Variable Selection and Prediction with Pathomic Features"
Gary Hettinger, PhD
Assistant Professor, NYU
Dissertation Advisor: Nandita Mitra, PhD
"Causal Inference Methods to Evaluate Health Policies with Spillover"
Dazheng Zhang, PhD
Statistics Advisor - Eli Lilly and Company
Dissertation Advisor: Yong Chen, PhD
"Empowering RCT with Multi-Site Multi-Source RWD: A Statistical Learning Perspective"
2024
Jiayi Tong, PhD
Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University
Dissertation Advisor: Yong Chen, PhD
"Distributed Algorithms and Statistical Inference for Multi-Site Analyses: Unfolding the Complexity of Heterogeneity in Real-World Data"
Emily Getzen, PhD
Machine Learning Scientist, Apple
Dissertation Advisor: Qi Long, PhD
"Mining for Health: Advancing Trustworthy Statistical and Machine Learning Methods for Complex Electronic Health Records Data"
Kyle Coleman, PhD
Research Scientist, Cedars-Sinai
Dissertation Advisor: Mingyao Li, PhD
"Machine learning methods for the analysis of multi-modal spatial omics data"
Eunchan Bae, PhD
Senior Statistician, AbbVie
Dissertation Advisor: Russell Shinohara, PhD
"Statistical Segmentation Models for Neuroimaging Data"
Jenny Shen, PhD
Senior Statistician, Spark Therapeutics, Inc.
Dissertation Advisors: Kristin Linn, PhD & Rebecca Hubbard, PhD
"Robust and Replicable Statistical Methods for Incomplete Data with Complex Observational Patterns"
2023
Benny Ren
Assistant Professor, Stony Brook University
Dissertation Advisors: Ian Barnett, PhD & Jeff Morris, PhD
Francesca Mandel
Mathematical Statistician, Food & Drug Administration
Dissertation Advisor:
“Statistical Methods for Neural Networks”
Hayley Locke
Dissertation Advisor: Sharon Xie, PhD
"Missing Data and Measurement Error Methods for Left-Truncated Survival Data"
Kenneth Locke, Jr.
Principle Statistician, Glaxo Smith Kline
Dissertation Advisors: Yong Chen, PhD, and Richard J. Landis, PhD
"Preserving Patient Privacy in Modeling Multi-Category Outcomes across Real-World Data Sources"
Rebecca Deek
Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation Advisor: Hongzhe Lee, PhD
"Statistical Methods for Modeling Complex Dependency Structures in Zero-inflated Metagenomic Sequencing Data"
Andrew Chen
Assistant Professor, Medical University of South Carolina
Dissertation Advisors: Haochang Shou, PhD and Russell Shinohara, PhD
"Novel Methods for Statistical Analysis of Covariance Structures"
Danni Tu
Data Scientist, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
Dissertation Advisor: Russell Shinohara, PhD
"Statistical and Machine Learning Methods for Neuroimaging and Neurocognitive Data"
Sarah Weinstein
Assistant Professor, Temple University
Dissertation Advisors: Kristin Linn, PhD and Russell Shinohara, PhD
"Statistical Methods for Extracting and Comparing Patterns in Multimodal Neuroimaging Studies"
Haotian Zheng
Senior Biostatistician II, Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Dissertation Advisor: Hongzhe Lee, PhD
"Transfer Learning in Classification and Regression with Summary Statistics"
2022
Hannah Lindner
Statistician, Radiation Effects Research Foundation
"Statistical methods for the identification, evaluation, and classification of non-monotone biomarkers in case-control studies"
Dissertation Advisors: Warren Bilker, PhD and Phyllis Gimotty, PhD
Assistant Research Professor, Fox-Chase Cancer Center
Jill Schnall Hasler
Assistant Research Professor, Fox-Chase Cancer Center
Dissertation Advisor: Jinbo Chen, PhD
“Methods for Comparative Effectiveness Research with Real-World Data”
Lillian Boe
Principal Biostatistician, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Dissertation Advisor: Pamela Shaw, PhD
“Statistical Approaches to Reducing Bias and Improving Variance Estimation in the Presence of Covariate and Outcome Measurement Error”
Carolyn Lou
Manager of Biostatistics, Pfizer
Dissertation Advisor: Russell Shinohara, PhD
“Statistical Methods for the Analysis and Development of Radiomic Predictors”
Joanna Harton
Real-World Evidence Analytics Scientist, Genesis Research
Dissertation Advisor: Nandita Mitra, PhD, Rebecca Hubbard, PhD
“Methods for Comparative Effectiveness Research with Real-World Data”
Jian Hu
Assistant Professor, Tenure Track, Emory University
Dissertation Advisor: Mingyao Li, PhD
“Machine Learning Methods for the Analysis of Single-Cell and Spatially Resolved Transcriptomics Data”
Nicholas Illenberger
Assistant Professor, New York University
Dissertation Advisor: Nandita Mitra, PhD
“Causal Inference Methods for Joint Censored Cost and Effectiveness Outcomes”
Jianqiao Wang
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Harvard University
Dissertation Advisor: Hongzhe Lee, PhD
“Inference of shared genetic architecture with genome-wide association data”
Yaqian "Angela" Zhu
Senior Biostatistician, Johnson & Johnson
Dissertation Advisor: Nandita Mitra, PhD, Jason Roy, PhD
“Causal Inference Methods for Addressing Positivity Violations and Bias in Observational and Cluster-Randomized Studies”
2021
Justin Lakkis
Quantitative Researcher, Citadel
Dissertation Advisor: Mingyao Li, PhD
“Scalable Machine Learning Methods for the Analysis of Single-cell Transcriptomics and Multiomics Data”
Victoria Arthur
DissertationAdvisor: Jinbo Chen, PhD
“Statistical Methods for Paired Transplant Genetic Data”
Mackenzie Edmondson
Senior Scientist, Merck & Co.
Dissertation Advisor: Yong Chen, PhD
“Privacy-Preserving Distributed Regression Algorithms for Analysis of Multi-Site Real-World Data”
Rong Ma
Postdoctoral Researcher, Stanford University
Dissertation Advisors: Hongzhe Lee, PhD and Tony Cai, PhD
“Problems in High-Dimensional Statistics with Applications in Genomics, Metabolomics, and Microbiomics”
Arielle Marks-Anglin
Human Services Researcher, Mathematica, Inc.
Dissertation Advisor: Yong Chen, PhD
“Methods for Bias Reduction in Evidence-Based Medicine"