Biostatistics

Biostatistics is both an essential interdisciplinary partner in biomedical and public health research, and a distinct methodological discipline that develops analytic solutions to our increasingly complex experimental designs and data structures. The Department of Biostatistics at Columbia University is well positioned to meet those challenges.

I believe in setting the performance and expectation bar high, for both faculty and students. I also believe in providing the appropriate intellectual and technological tools, and other resources needed to ensure that with hard work, those expectations are realized. Finally, I believe that practice leads to perfection, so in addition to rigorous statistical training, our students are given the opportunity to participate in real world statistical consults, led by our own biostatistics faculty, with investigators from across the health science campus.

Students are exposed to content projects ranging from HIV vaccine trials, to transplant studies, to genome wide association studies; and methodological projects from survival analysis, to fMRI studies, to group randomized trials. They are immersed in our faculty’s methodological and collaborative research, and are asked to present their contribution to that work at a school-wide research day or at a professional meeting.

I expect no less from our faculty. Our exceptional faculty are among the most celebrated in the school, for both teaching and research.  Among our 30 faculty, six have won entrance into the Glenda Garvey teaching academy, two have received a Mailman School Teacher of the Year award, two have been inducted into the ASPH/Pfizer Public Health Academy of Distinguished Teachers, two have received a prestigious university-wide Presidential Teaching Award, and one received the Mailman Early Career Teaching Award.  

We boast more than a dozen Calderone Research Award winners, five ASA Fellows, and an ASA Young Investigator Award winner, among many others. Our faculty have authored or co-authored thousands of peer review publications, and several books.

With the help of our stellar faculty, I am committed to ensuring that our students emerge from the department prepared; well steeped in current theory and practice, and ready to meet the growing statistical challenges in our increasingly data rich science environments.

Roger D. Vaughan, DrPH, MS
Professor and Chair
Department of Biostatistics