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In the News

Headlines featuring UW Biostatistics people and research.
Peter Gilbert
Peter Gilbert
Genomic sieve analysis can inform SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development
Medical Xpress,

"Think of the vaccine as a sieve and different variants as pebbles poured into the sieve: the vaccine will block some variants but allow others to pass through, and sieve analysis learns which variants make it through." — Peter Gilbert, biostatistician at the Fred Hutch Vaccine and Infectious Disease and Public Health Sciences Divisions and a UW research professor of biostatistics.

In this Jan. 26, 2021, file photo, registered nurse Diane Miller stands in the "hot zone," defined by red tape on the floor, as she waits to exchange equipment with a colleague who will remain on the other side of the tape in the COVID acute care unit at UW Medical Center-Montlake in Seattle. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)
In this Jan. 26, 2021, file photo, registered nurse Diane Miller stands in the "hot zone," defined by red tape on the floor, as she waits to exchange equipment with a colleague who will remain on the other side of the tape in the COVID acute care unit at UW Medical Center-Montlake in Seattle. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)
UW expert on how ‘genetic ancestry’ can impact reactions to medical treatments
MyNorthwest,

Different races have been found to react differently to certain medical treatments, in part based on an individual’s genetic ancestry. Those genetic health risks are being studied by Dr. Timothy Thornton, a professor, the associate chair of education, and the graduate program director in the department of biostatistics at the University of Washington School of Public Health.

Photo of Garnet Anderson in front of Fred Hutch logo
Photo of Garnet Anderson in front of Fred Hutch logo
Women’s Health Initiative to continue: NIH awards a new $72M extension for the WHI Clinical Coordinating Center, housed at Fred Hutch
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Hutch News,

“The WHI has been remarkably productive in pursuing a broad range of scientific questions important to women,” said Garnet Anderson (PhD ’89) director of the Hutch's Public Health Sciences division and principal investigator of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) clinical coordinating center. Anderson is also an affiliate professor of biostatistics with the University of Washington School of Public Health.

Graphic of DNA strand transitioning into human figure
Graphic of DNA strand transitioning into human figure
Q&A: Race, medicine and the future power of genetic ancestry
UW News,

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine that they “do not believe that ignoring race will reduce health disparities” but rather that “such an approach is a form of naive ‘color blindness’ that is more likely to perpetuate and potentially exacerbate disparities,” five Black geneticists set out to explain the pitfalls of leaving race out of medicine. UW news reached out to co-author Timothy Thornton from Biostatistics to learn more. 

Graphic outlining the process of how cloud computing, machine learning, and advanced data analytics allows for future predictive algorithms of clinical outcomes for neonates
Graphic outlining the process of how cloud computing, machine learning, and advanced data analytics allows for future predictive algorithms of clinical outcomes for neonates
Wireless skin sensors for physiological monitoring of infants in low-income and middle-income countries
The Lancet Digital Health,

Through continued intentional collaboration between engineers, data scientists, nurses, health-care providers, philanthropists, and patients' families, new skin-integrated systems offer the promise of raising the standard of neonatal monitoring by improving outcomes and humanizing care worldwide. Amy Sarah Ginsburg with the UW Clinical Trial Center, based out of the Department of Biostatistics, is a co-author

Photos of Peter Gilbert and Holly Janes
Photos of Peter Gilbert and Holly Janes
Biostatisticians draft blueprints for COVID-19 vax trials
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Hutch News,

When COVID-19 burst onto the scene last winter, and Tony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was looking for a way to run massive, credible and rigorous trials of potential vaccines, he turned to experts at the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Co-principal investigators of the HVTN Statistics and Data Management Center include three researchers who are also University of Washington School of Public Health faculty: Peter Gilbert (Biostat), Holly Janes (Biostat), and Yunda Huang (Global Health).

Headshot of Jon Wakefield
Headshot of Jon Wakefield
Space‐time modeling of child mortality at the Admin‐2 level in a low and middle income countries context
Wiley Online Library,

Jonathan Wakefield, professor of biostatistics and statistics, is co-author of this paper that describes four extensions to previous work: (i) combining summary birth history data with full birth history data, (ii) modeling on a yearly scale, to combine data on a yearly scale with data at coarser time scales, (iii) adjusting direct estimates in Admin‐2 areas where we do not observe any deaths due to small sample sizes, (iv) acknowledge differences in data sources by modeling potential bias arising from the various data sources. 

Headshot of Ellen Wijsman
Headshot of Ellen Wijsman
High Standards: A Profile of Ellen Wijsman
ADRC News,

Ellen Wijsman will admit that she doesn’t have all the answers, but she might just have all the right questions. As Professor of Biostatistics in the UW School of Public Health and UW Division of Medical Genetics/Department of Medicine in the School of Medicine, she has a healthy skepticism for new scientific discoveries about Alzheimer’s disease.