| Spring 2008 UMASS
Amherst Operations Research / Management Science Seminar Series |
Date: Friday, April 4, 2008 Time: 11:00 AM Location: Isenberg School of Management, Room 112 |
| Speaker: Professor David
Wypij Department of Biostatistics Harvard School of Public Health Harvard University |
| Biography: David Wypij's
methodological research is focused in the areas of longitudinal data
analysis, the analysis of discrete data, and nonparametric statistics,
with applications to problems in cardiac surgery, clinical trials,
longitudinal studies of neurodevelopmental outcomes, and environmental
epidemiology. Areas of interest include the analysis of repeated measures and growth curve models, relative risk regression models, and the analysis of correlated, matched, and longitudinal binary data, such as arising from teratological studies or diary studies. Related interests include the study of bias and robust estimation of variance under misspecification of the statistical model, the analysis of missing data, methods for exact statistical inference, and the non-parametric estimation of ROC curves. Recent work has focused on the application of logistic regression and generalized estimating equations to rank-based comparisons, with application to ROC curves, Wilcoxon tests, and the semi-parametric assessment of risk in toxicological studies. Dr. Wypij serves as the statistician for several randomized clinical trials being conducted at the Department of Cardiology, Children's Hospital, comparing the incidence of brain injury after operative strategies in infant heart surgery, with follow-up visits scheduled when the children are one, four, and eight years of age. He has collaborated on a number of other studies with investigators in the Departments of Psychiatry, Neuroepidemiology, Neurology, and Cardiology at Children's Hospital. He also works with the Harvard Six Cities Study of Air Pollution and Health, assessing the effects of air pollution, parental or personal smoking, and other risk factors on the pulmonary function level or growth rate of children and adolescents. Dr. Wypij is also the statistician for a malaria clinical trials networks, involving randomized clinical trials in five African countries. Dr. Wypij received his doctorate frrom Cornell University, an Sc.M. from Brown University, and a B.S. and M.S. from Clarkson University. |
| TITLE: Lessons Learned from
Malaria Research in Africa (Or How I Moved from Operations Research
Training to a Career in Biostatistics) |
| Abstract: This talk will provide an
overview of the Severe Malaria in African Children Clinical Research
Network, which has been funded by the National Institutes of Health
since 1996. The network involves researchers from six hospitals
in five African countries, plus investigators from the U.S., Great
Britain, and Germany. A summary of important findings will be
presented, with a focus on the analysis of heterogeneity across sites
in a sample of 26,296 hospital admissions for malaria. Strengths
and weaknesses of the design and analysis of the studies will be
highlighted, together with some thoughts about the application of
operations research methods to public health. |
| This series is organized by the
UMASS Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. Support for this series is
provided by the Isenberg School of Management, the Department of
Finance and Operations Management, INFORMS, and the John F. Smith
Memorial Fund. For questions, please contact the INFORMS Student Chapter Speaker Series Coordinator, Ms. Trisha Woolley, twoolley@som.umass.edu |