Fred Hutch welcomes new Biostatistics leader\u00a0<\/p>\n
This summer, Li joined Fred Hutch as the head of the Biostatistics Program<\/a> and inaugural holder of the Donald and Janet K. Guthrie Endowed Chair in Statistics. She is also an affiliate professor of Biostatistics at the University of Washington.<\/p>\n The endowed chair Li holds was inspired by a conviction that statistics has the potential to transform lives.<\/p>\n Don Guthrie, a long-time Fred Hutch supporter, established it in honor of his father, Donald Guthrie, a statistician who believed in the power of applied statistics to expand our understanding of the world. Like Li, he was also on the faculty at UCLA, where he taught for three decades.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are fortunate to have Dr. Li as an advocate for the use of applied statistics across Fred Hutch,\u201d said Fred Hutch President and Director Thomas J. Lynch, Jr., MD, holder of the Raisbeck Endowed Chair. \u201cAnd as biological research becomes increasingly data-intensive, this endowed chair from Don builds momentum for the role of statistics in unlocking future cancer and infectious disease breakthroughs.\u201d<\/p>\n Why statistical models matter<\/p>\n As evolving biotechnologies expand capacity for data collection, statistics is critical for shaping research questions, designing experiments and deriving meaningful insights. Through applied statistics, scientists can better understand the results of their experiments to make more precise conclusions. In turn, these conclusions can drive new innovations in cancer and infectious disease treatments.<\/p>\n Recently, Li developed a new data analysis framework for single-cell transcriptomics, the study of the RNA molecules that determine a cell\u2019s protein production. Transcriptomics, which typically involves tens of thousands of data points, can help researchers assess a variety of biological phenomena, including the effectiveness of a cancer treatment.<\/p>\n In transcriptomic analysis, researchers often perform multiple computational operations on the same dataset, a practice known as \u201cdouble dipping.\u201d Examining this practice, Li found that early manipulations can skew downstream results. Her team at UCLA designed a framework to improve accuracy in transcriptomic data analysis \u2014 which she hopes scientists will use in their biological research.<\/p>\n Joining Fred Hutch, she\u2019s tapping into a network to which she knows biologists are paying attention. The Biostatistics Program, within the Public Health Sciences Division, emphasizes collaboration within the center and beyond, and Fred Hutch is home to the statistical coordinating center for several national research networks, including the Cancer Screening Research Network<\/a>, the HIV Vaccine Trials Network<\/a> (SCHARP), and the Women\u2019s Health Initiative<\/a>. <\/p>\n From helping shape computing and machine learning models for disease prediction and treatment response to evaluating diagnostic tools for disease, the Biostatistics Program plugs directly into critical research happening across the country. <\/p>\n \u201cI won\u2019t need to wait for people to discover my methods by reading my papers,\u201d Li said. \u201cI can be my own methods-user and collaborate with people to help solve analysis problems.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fred Hutch welcomes new Biostatistics leader\u00a0 This summer, Li joined Fred Hutch as the head of the Biostatistics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6136,19928,114,44266,6752,44264,85,46,4145,44267,41580,44265],"class_list":{"0":"post-59528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-biostatistics","9":"tag-bladder-cancer","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-endowed-chair","12":"tag-good-news","13":"tag-hodgkin-lymphoma","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-lung-cancer","17":"tag-non-hodgkin-lymphoma","18":"tag-remission","19":"tag-rituximab"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}