About the Department
Department of Biostatistics at NYU GPH is engaged in three inter-related activities that aim to improve Public Health through rigorous research and that educate future practitioners, leaders and researchers. We strive for excellence in:
- innovative and groundbreaking methodological research that is relevant to critical Public Health research
- collaborative research in pressing and important Public Health issues;
- education and training of students from diverse backgrounds in cutting edge statistical methods for design and analysis of studies used in Public Health research, as well as theoretical foundations that will serve as the basis for future innovations.
We are experiencing major events in Public Health and Biostatistics has many critical contributions to make. We welcome you to our department and invite you to explore all of our facets in these webpages.
Prominent Links
Departmental Annual Report
Our Efforts in Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI)
Our faculty were recently featured in the Amstat News cover story recognizing academic departments for JEDI efforts.
Student Life
Click here to read about and view photos from past student life events.
Contact Us
- Email: gph.bsadmin@nyu.edu
- Twitter: @NYUGPHBiostats
- Three NYU GPH Department of Biostatistics students–Tun He, Lijing Wei, and Weng In Leong–participated at the 2025 Columbia BMES Healthcare Hackathon, a 48-hour healthcare-focused hackathon bringing together 150+ participants from Columbia and neighboring universities to collaborate in small teams, creating innovative hardware solutions for pressing challenges in healthcare. The hackathon took place from February 8–9, 2025, at Columbia University. (Photo)
- At the 2024 Academic Data Science Alliance Annual Meeting, held on from October 29th-31st, 2024 at the University of Michigan, 2nd-year MS student Nathaniel Maxey presented his first-authored study, "A Quasi-Experimental Study of New York City's Sodium Warning Regulation and Hypertension Prevalence, 2005-2020". We are proud to share that his project – with co-authors also including 2023 MS alumna Marina Mautner-Wizentier – was selected as one of the winners among presented posters. (Photo)
- Two of our 2nd-year master's students, Weng In Leong (MPH candidate) and Kaylen Wei (MS candidate), presented their research poster "Remote Work and Mental Health Among Employed US Adults in the Household Pulse Survey" at the NYU Langone Health Equity Symposium on Tuesday, October 8th (photo).
- We are pleased to welcome new permanent faculty members Drs. Yajun Mei and Wen Zhou to our department. Having officially joined our department on July 1st, Drs. Mei and Zhou join us as Professor and Associate Professor of Biostatistics, respectively.
- We are happy to have welcomed Professor Lisa Barnes as the keynote speaker of our fourth annual PQAR Symposium, which took place on Thursday, July 18th.
- We are excited to share that many of our 2024 MS and MPH graduates have entered into exciting, data-driven roles such as Data Strategy Analyst at Bank of Beijing, CDC Data Analyst at Weems Design Company, and Biostatistician at NYU Langone. In addition, several have recently been accepted to PhD programs - we congratulate them, and you can find many of these PhD and job placements on our Where Your Degree Can Take You page. Below are several of these recent PhD acceptances:
- PhD Candidate in Public Health (Health Behavior), Oregon State University
- PhD Candidate in Health and Biomedical Data Science (Applied Biostatistics Track), George Washington University
- MD/PhD Candidate in Biomedical Sciences, Ohio State University, Wexner Medical Center
- PhD Candidate in Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
- PhD Candidate in Biostatistics, Michigan State University
- PhD Candidate in Biostatistics, UT Health Sciences Center at Houston (2 separate students)
- PhD Candidate in Population Health & Clinical Outcomes Research, Stony Brook University
- As part of our program, our 2024 graduates' work culminated in their Masters' Theses, many of which you can find on our Biostatistics Student Theses page. In particular, we would like to congratulate graduates Aoran Chen, Junfan Chen, Xiaowen Chen, Olivia Chien, Kexin Fu, Longfei Gao, Zian Liu, Jessica Peng, Effy Ren, Phuc Vu, Wanyi Wang, and Rachel Warshaw for receiving our department's thesis recognition awards (the recognition categories for which can also be found on the Student Theses page).
- Congratulations to the Class of 2024! Our graduates have done incredible work throughout their time in our program, which we were thrilled to celebrate at our departmental graduation reception on May 13th (photos). We would like to congratulate graduates Manali Ashok Dule, Arushi Chadha, Maame Duah, Kexin Fu, Jyothi Jose, Jinwoo Kim, Qiran Liang, Anelfi Maria, Han Oo, Rebecca Ortiz, Effy Ren, Xinnuo Shi, Phuc Vu, and Vanilla Zhu as the recipients of our community recognition awards, as thanks for their direct contributions to our department's efforts throughout their time in our program.
- Our department chair, Dr. Rebecca Betensky, is one of three NYU professors to have been recognized as 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellows, a distinguished lifetime honor within the scientific community! She was recognized for her distinguished contributions to statistical methodology and biomedical research, outstanding leadership of our department, and commitment to and accomplishments in the promotion of diversity in statistics; read more about this honor at NYU's announcement here.
- A paper co-authored by 4th-year PhD student Zoé Haskell-Craig, “Understanding Disparities in Post Hoc Machine Learning Explanation”, was recently accepted at the ACM conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (FAccT).
- Congratulations to our department's Dr. Yang Feng, who has been awarded the GPH Teaching Excellence Award for the 2023-2024 academic year!
- Dr. Jemar Bather, a visiting professor in our department, is a recipient of the 2023 NVDRS New Investigator Research Award, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Public Health Association (APHA). This award is geared toward emerging researchers to promote innovative and quality analysis of violent death data collected by the National Violent Death Reporting System.
- In addition to our students' involvement in ENAR DataFest (listed below),
- 1st-year PhD student Zhihao Chen and 2nd-year MS student Phuc Vu, each participated in invited poster presentation sessions.
- 3 students from our 2023 PQAR cohort (Taliyah Griffin, Torriana Avery, and Nathaniel "Nate" Maxey, currently in his first year of our MS program) were also in attendance.
- In terms of faculty involvement: Dr. Stephanie Cook was the keynote speaker for the Fostering Diversity Workshop on Sunday, March 10th; Dr. Melody Goodman led and participated in a panel; and Drs. Rebecca Betensky and Siyu Heng each gave invited abstract presentations.
- We're proud to announce that out of 6 teams selected as finalists for the 2024 ENAR DataFest, 3 were comprised entirely of PhD and master's students from our department (10 of our students in total). All 3 went on to present their work at the ENAR 2024 Spring Meeting on March 12th (pictured here), and one of our students' teams was ultimately selected as the winner of the competition! (On February 6th, these teams also presented their work to our department, and more information - such as their project titles - is available on the event's flyer here.) The 3 teams from our department are as follows:
- Yuyu (Ruby) Chen (3rd-year PhD), Taehyo Kim (2nd-year PhD), Cindy Patippe (1st-year PhD) (Video)
- Zoé Haskell-Craig (4th-year PhD), Jianan Zhu (2nd-year PhD), Xiaoting Chen (1st-year PhD), Jihan (Iris) Zhang (1st-year PhD) (Video)
- Selected as the final winner of the ENAR 2024 DataFest for their project and presentation, "Exploring the Determinants of Worsening Blood Pressure Control in the US"!
- Phuc Vu (2nd-year MPH), Weng In Leong (1st-year MPH), Kaylen Wei (1st-year MS) (Slides, Video)
- One of our second-year PhD students, Taehyo Kim, has had his first-authored paper selected as runner-up for the 2024 Student Paper Competition of the ASA Statistics in Imaging Section. This paper, "DeepFDR: A Deep Learning-based False Discovery Rate Control Method for Neuroimaging Data", was also co-authored by our department's Dr. Hai Shu and MS '22 alumnus Qiran Jia, and Taehyo has been invited to deliver an oral presentation on the paper at the 2024 Joint Statistical Meetings.
- One of our second-year PhD students, Jianan Zhu, has co-authored a paper, "Simulation of New York City’s Ventilator Allocation Guideline During the Spring 2020 COVID-19 Surge", which was recently published in Critical Care Medicine (also co-authored by our department's Drs. Yang Feng and Rebecca Betensky).
- Our department's Dr. Melody Goodman assumed the role of Senior Executive Vice Dean of the School of Global Public Health on December 1st, 2023. She will continue with her roles as the Director of the Center for Anti-racism, Social Justice, and Public Health, and as Professor of Biostatistics.
(Archived news items)
Click here for the full webview of our upcoming events
Biostatistics Seminar Series
Thursday, February 27th, 1:00-2:00pm ET
"Unraveling the Threads of Informed Presence Bias and Health Inequities in EHR Research"; to be presented by Dr. Rebecca Hubbard of Brown University School of Public Health (Flyer, RSVP)
Student Life
Friday, February 28th, 12:30pm ET
Escape Room Adventure
Biostatistics Journal Club
Wednesday, March 12, 2:00 – 3:00pm ET
- Discussion led by first-year PhD student Rophence Ojiambo, on BMC Medical Research Methodology article “Joint modelling of longitudinal lipids and time to coronary heart disease in the Jackson Heart Study”
"Women in Statistics" Panel in Celebration of Women's History Month
Tuesday, March 18th, 3:00 – 5:00pm ET
Join us on Tuesday, March 18th @ 3:00 PM as the Department of Biostatistics at NYU GPH hosts a special event in celebration of Women’s History Month! This event will feature a diverse group of women statisticians from academia and industry as they share their career journeys, insights, and advice on navigating the field of statistics. Our panelists include Daphna Harel, PhD, Madhu Mazumdar, PhD and Loni P. Tabb, PhD. Moderated by our very own Dr. Rumi Chunara, this event offers a unique opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations, gain valuable perspectives, and expand your professional network. (Flyer, RSVP)
Biostatistics Seminar Series
Thursday, March 20th, 1:00 – 2:00pm ET
"Advancing Responsible Statistical and AI/ML Methods for Harnessing the Power of Electronic Health Records" to be presented by Dr. Qi Long of University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine (RSVP)
NYC Open Data Week 2025: Public Data for Public Health: Applications to NYC
Thursday, March 24th, 1:00 – 2:00pm ET
Hear student presentations for NYC Open Data Week! Students will present their research on the public health issues that affect the complex city of New York! Talks will include:
- A Quasi-Experimental Study of New York City’s Sodium Warning Regulation and Hypertension Prevalence, 2005-2020 (Nathaniel Maxey)
- Relationship between Cycling and the Prevalence of Hypertension among Adults in New York City (Zhiyuan Ning)
- Analyzing potential differences from inpatient and outpatient satisfaction among sexual orientation and gender minority (SGM) oncology patients between 2021-2023 in a large single-center, research-oriented, urban cancer center of the United States Northeast (Annie Qiu)
- Timing of Noncardiac Surgery and Perioperative Major Adverse Events After Cardiovascular Interventions (Angel Singh)
Click here to read the abstracts for all the talks. (Flyer, RSVP)
Check Out Our Past Seminars & Events
Christopher Park, MPH '19
"Critical and conceptual understanding of data is necessary for public health research. My biostatistics courses have helped me to develop statistical analytic skills that shape the way I think about data management and utilization in a way that’s fit for public health discoveries."
Ejiro Gbaje, MPH '19
"I am fascinated by the power of biostatistics; it uses mathematics to paint pictures of underlying conditions."
Yan Zhang, MPH '19
"The ability to extract health-related patterns from uncertainty is the undeniable beauty of biostatistics."