Harvard university department of biostatistics

Abstract

The Department of Biostatistics was founded in 1922 (initially as the Department of Vital Statistics) with the creation of the Harvard School of Public Health. Its first chair was E. B. Wilson, who served from 1922-1946. The department was renamed the Department of Biostatistics with the appointment of Hugo Muench as chair in 1946. Subsequent chairs were Robert Reed (1961-1963), Jane Worcester (1973-1977), Fred Mosteller (1977-1981), Marvin Zelen (1981-1990), Nan Laird (1990-1999), Stephen Lagakos (1999-2007), Louise Ryan (2007-2009), and Victor DeGruttola (2009-present). The department offers both doctoral and master's degree programs; currently there are approximately 90 graduate students in these programs. The department is home to 56 primary and secondary faculty, as well as 100+ postdoctoral fellows, research associates, and scientists. The department's faculty work in a wide variety of methodological areas of research, including the design and analysis of clinical trials, survival analysis, sequential methods, statistical genetics, longitudinal analysis, semi-parametric methods, causal inference, measurement errors, Bayesian methods, surveillance, screening for the early detection of disease, bioinformatics and computational biology, personalized medicine, comparative effectiveness, network analysis, signal and imaging processing, and computationally intensive methods. They direct the statistical coordinating centers for the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG), and the International Breast Cancer Study Group (IBCSG). In addition, the department has a very active research program in environmental health.