A team of researchers that included UW Biostatistics Professor Jon Wakefield presented discrete time-space estimates of the under-five mortality rate in 262 regions in Africa.

“You could say it was a Denisovan cave, and the Neanderthals just visited for a while,” says Sharon Browning, a biostatistician at the University of Washington, Seattle, who has worked on Denisovan remains but wasn’t involved with either new study. “Though the Neanderthal occupation appears to have extended for tens of thousands of years, so it was a long visit.”

UW Biostatistics Research Professor Sharon Browning is quoted in reference to two papers published today that present an updated timeline for the occupation of Denisova cave by Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Fred Hutch researchers Ruth Etzioni, last year’s Prentice Professor and current affiliate professor of biostatistics and health services, and UW graduate Joseph Unger (MS Biostat ‘93, PhD Health Services ‘13) weigh in on a milestone report from the American Cancer Society.

Biostatistics professor Sharon Browning’s study is listed as one of the findings that contributed to “a major theme of human evolutionary studies this year: an emphasis on understanding the biological consequences of genetic variants that we inherited from our Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestors.

Kelsey Grinde, a doctoral student in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington School of Public Health, is a recipient of the inaugural Dorothy L. Simpson Leadership Award, presented by the Seattle Chapter of Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation.

Jonathan Wakefield, professor of biostatistics at the University of Washington School of Public Health, was invited to be a member of the technical advisory group to the United Nations (UN) Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.

Associate Biostatistics Professor Gary Chan, who is also an associate professor of health services, is a co-investigator for Amigas Latinas Motivando el Alma (ALMA), a mindfulness project that helps Latina immigrant women build coping skills to combat depression and anxiety.