Siyu Heng

Assistant Professor of Biostatistics

Professional overview

Siyu Heng, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics, with an interest in both methodology research and applied research. His areas of expertise are in causal inference, health data science, observational studies, randomized trials, sensitivity analysis, instrumental variables, measurement error, and in survey data and their applications in public health.

Dr. Heng’s research has been published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society and in Physical Review, among others. He has been recognized with several awards, including the IPUMS Global Health Research Award for the Best Student Paper; the Lawrence D. Brown Best Paper Award; the ASA Mental Health Statistics Section Student Paper Award; the ENAR Distinguished Student Paper Award; the NESS Student Research Award, and the Wellcome Trust Data Reuse Prize.

Dr. Heng received his PhD in applied mathematics and computational science from the University of Pennsylvania, and his BA in statistics from Nanjing University.

Education

PhD Candidate, Applied Mathematics and Computational Science (Statistics Track) University of Pennsylvania

BS, Mathematics, Nanjing University

Honors and awards

IPUMS Global Health Research Award for the Best Student Paper, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (2021)

IMS Hannan Graduate Student Travel Award, Institute of Mathematical Statistics (2021)

ASA Mental Health Statistics Section Student Paper Award, American Statistical Association Section on Mental Health Statistics (2021)

ENAR Distinguished Student Paper Award, International Biometric Society Eastern North American Region (2021)

Wellcome Trust Data Reuse Prize: Malaria, Wellcome Trust (2019)

Benjamin Franklin Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences (201620172018)

Areas of research and study

Causal Inference

Epidemiology

Global Health

Health Equity

Instrumental Variables

Observational Studies

Public Health Policy

Randomized Experimentation

Social Sciences

Publications

Publications

On interactions between observed and unobserved covariates in matched observational studies

Heng, S., & Small, D. S. (n.d.).

Publication year

2020

Journal title

arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.00766

Protocol for a retrospective, comparative effectiveness study of the association between transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) monitoring used in coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery and clinical outcomes

Mackay, E. J., Zhang, B. o., Heng, S., & Ye, T. (n.d.).

Publication year

2020

Journal title

MedRxiv

Page(s)

2020--05

Protocol for an Observational Study of the Effect of Social Distancing on COVID-19-Related Death Toll during Phased Reopening

Zhang, B. o., Heng, S., Ye, T., & Small, D. S. (n.d.).

Publication year

2020

Protocol for an observational study on the effects of social distancing on influenza-like illness and COVID-19

Zhang, B. o., Ye, T., Heng, S., Levy, M. Z., & Small, D. S. (n.d.).

Publication year

2020

Journal title

arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.02944

Social Distancing and Fevers

Zhang, B. o., Ye, T., Heng, S., & Small, D. S. (n.d.).

Publication year

2020

Instrumental variables: to strengthen or not to strengthen

Heng, S., Zhang, B. o., Han, X. u., Lorch, S. A., & Small, D. S. (n.d.).

Publication year

2019

Journal title

arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.09171

Re-Evaluating Strengthened-IV Designs: Asymptotic Efficiency, Bias Formula, and the Validity and Power of Sensitivity Analyses

Heng, S., Zhang, B. o., Han, X. u., Lorch, S. A., & Small, D. S. (n.d.).

Publication year

2019

Journal title

arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.09171

Can phoretic particles swim in two dimensions?

Sondak, D., Hawley, C., Heng, S., Vinsonhaler, R., Lauga, E., & Thiffeault, J.-L. (n.d.).

Publication year

2016

Journal title

Physical Review E

Volume

94

Issue

6

Page(s)

062606

Can phoretic particles swim in two dimensions?

Thiffeault, J. L., Vinsonhaler, R., Heng, S., Lauga, E. J.-M., Sondak, D., Hawley, C., & Heng, S. (n.d.).

Publication year

2016

Online Supplementary Materials for Association Between Transesophageal Echocardiography (TEE) During Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) Surgery and Clinical Outcomes

Mackay, E. J., Zhang, B. o., Heng, S., Ye, T., Neuman, M. D., Augoustides, J. G., Feinman, J., Desai, N. D., & Groeneveld, P. W. (n.d.).

RIIM: Randomization-Based Inference Under Inexact Matching

Zhu, J., Zhang, J., Guo, Z., & Heng, S. (n.d.).