Biostatistics PhD News

Anru Zhang, PhD ,  Eugene Anson Stead Jr., MD, Associate Professor of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics,  received recognition from the Duke Office of Biomedical Graduate Education for his excellence in teaching. His BIOSTAT 915 course, High-Dimensional Statistics, is one of the most highly rated courses in the Duke University School of Medicine, according to student evaluations.

Biostatistics doctoral student Zhuoran Hou successfully defended his dissertation, “ Biases in Association Studies and Heritability Estimation for Structured Populations,” on Monday, January 12, 2026.

Biostatistics doctoral student Huan Liang has been awarded a Duke University School of Medicine Office of Biomedical and Graduate Education (OBGE) and Precision Genomics Collaboratory pilot grant.

Congratulations to the following doctoral students who have successfully defended their dissertations and will graduate from the Biostatistics PhD Program.

Biostatistics PhD student Zhuoran Hou has been selected to learn about oncology drug development and regulatory policy through the FDA-OCE-ASA Oncology Education Fellowship. The fellowship is a collaborative effort of the Food and Drug Administration’s Oncology Center of Excellence, the American Statistical Association (ASA), and the ASA’s Biopharmaceutical Statistics Section (BIOP).

This fall, the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics welcomed a new cohort of PhD students in biostatistics. This accomplished group brings a wide range of academic backgrounds, research interests, and personal passions to the department. Their dedication to advancing health through data science and their enthusiasm for collaborative, interdisciplinary work will enrich the Duke community.

Matthew Engelhard, PhD, and PhD student Fengnan Li have developed a new natural language processing method that takes on the challenge of finding important details scattered throughout long documents.

The project, co-led by Matthew Engelhard, PhD, assistant professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics, aims to bring early mental health screening to clinics where access to care is limited.

Dr. Kara McCormack, a Biostatistics PhD Alum, was a guest speaker at the Center for Faculty Excellence's Showcase on Teaching event, where she discussed using the Ed Discussion platform for more engaging course discussions and learning.

Biostatistics doctoral student Peijin Wang and master of biostatistics alum Yi Liu were honored with the 2025 Best Poster Award from the organizing committee of the annual Duke Industry Statistics Symposium (DISS) on April 9, 2025. Wang won for the poster titled, "Joint Modeling of High-dimensional Longitudinal and Time-to-event Data using Supervised Low-rank Tensor Decomposition." Liu won for the poster, "Targeted Data Fusion for Causal Survival Analysis Under Distribution Shift." Liu is currently a doctoral student at North Carolina State University.