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Seminars, working groups, and more

Our students have many opportunities to develop and expand their network and expertise in biostatistics outside the classroom, through participating in all-department seminars, Journal Club, the Center for Quantitative Sciences , and other offerings.

Seminars

The Department of Biostatistics hosts hour-long seminars most Wednesdays during the academic year, featuring an international lineup of statistical experts and biomedical researchers. These are attended by the majority of faculty, staff, and trainees, along with members of the wider scientific community.Ìý

Detailed descriptions of upcoming seminars are posted on our Events page. Most of the seminars are presented virtually and open to the public; to join the seminar mailing list, contact the list admin.

  • 2026 - 2027

    DateSpeakerPrimary affiliationPresentationFormatMore about the speaker
    August 18, 2026Corinne Riddell, PhDäçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ of California, BerkeleyThree Methods for Achieving Causal Inference and Overcoming Confounding Biaseshybrid
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  • 2025 - 2026

    DateSpeakerPrimary affiliationPresentationFormatMore about the speaker
    August 27, 2025Haoyu Zhang, PhDNational Cancer InstituteAdvances in Polygenic Risk Prediction: Scalable Methods and Applications in Personalized Carevirtual
    September 3, 2025Hsin-Hsiung "Bill" Huang, PhDäçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ of Central FloridaRegularized Low-Rank Tensor Models for Neuroimaging: From Cyclic-Shift Signal Detection to Bayesian Mixed-Type Regressionhybrid
    September 10, 2025Amanda Golbeck, PhD, FASAäçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ of Arkansas for Medical SciencesTaking Thousands of Lights and Helping Them to Shine Brightervirtual
    September 17, 2025Frank Harrell, PhD, FASAVanderbilt äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ Medical CenterGoal-Driven Flexible Bayesian Designhybrid
    September 24, 2025Jessica Utts, PhD, FASA, FIMS, FAAAS, FAPSäçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ of California, IrvineStatistical Literacy and Data Science Ethicsvirtual
    October 8, 2025Weijie Su, PhD, FIMSWharton School / äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ of PennsylvaniaSome Statistical Opportunities for Large Language Modelsvirtual
    October 15, 2025Huilin Li, PhDNew York äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾Turning Biomedical Collaboration into Methodological Innovation: Insights from Microbiome and Multi-Omics Researchvirtual
    October 22, 2025Yu Wang, PhDVanderbilt äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ Medical CenterstImage: A versatile framework for optimizing spatial transcriptomic analysis through customizable deep histology and location informed integrationhybrid
    October 29, 2025Amy Willis, PhDäçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ of WashingtonNonparametric Identification and Estimation of Ratios of Multi-Category Means Under Preferential Sampling, With Applications to Microbial Differential Abundancevirtual
    November 5, 2025Gen Li, PhDäçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ of MichiganMulti-view regression analysis for multi-omics datavirtual
    November 12, 2025Lingxiao Wang, PhDäçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ of VirginiaDesign and analysis of two-phase biomarker studies with binary outcomes using inverse probability weighting with calibrationvirtual
    November 19, 2025postponedRichard McElreath,PhDMax Planck Institutevirtual, with many Statistical Rethinking resources
    December 3, 2025Mackenzie Stuenkel, PhDVanderbilt äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ Medical CenterThe Value of Infrastructure in Data Systems and Research: Building Strategic Research Frameworks for Innovationhybrid
    December 10, 2025Shujie Ma, PhDäçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ of California, RiversideCausal Inference on Quantile Dose-response Functions via Local ReLU Least Squares Weightingvirtual
    January 14, 2026Shyamal Peddada, PhD, FASANational Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of HealthA multi-modal study of microbiomes and metabolomes reveals a system-wide dysbiosis preceding HIV-1 infectionvirtual
    January 21, 2026Hajime Uno, PhDHarvard Medical School / Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health / Dana-Farber Cancer InstituteSurvival Data Analysis Using Average Hazard with Survival Weightvirtual
    January 28, 2026Bill Majoros, PhDDuke äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾Structured Modeling of Allelic-Specific Gene Expressionvirtual
    February 4, 2026Brian Williamson, PhDKaiser Permanente Washington Health Research InstituteMarginal generalized raking for missing or mismeasured datavirtual
    February 11, 2026Didong Li, PhDäçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ of North Carolina at Chapel HillStatistics in the Age of AI: Theory, Methods, Datavirtual
    February 18, 2026Daniel Moyer, PhDVanderbilt äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾Invariance and Inversion in Medical Machine LearningvirtualVALIANT profile
    February 25, 2026Emma Zhang, PhD, FASAEmory äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾Statistical Modeling and Inference for Gene Networks from Single-Cell Datavirtual
    March 11, 2026Benjamin Callahan, PhDNorth Carolina State äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾More Signal from Microbiome Data by Modeling Measurement Errorvirtual
    March 25, 2026Will Townes, PhDCarnegie Mellon äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾A novel class of mixed Poisson distributions and wastewater-based epidemiologyvirtual
    April 1Vanderbilt Biostatistics facultyLightning talksThis session is for department members and trainees only.
    April 8, 2026Xin Tu, PhDäçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ of California San DiegoEstimating Longitudinal Change in Network Transitivity: Application to Viral Genetic Linkage Networksvirtual
    April 22, 2026Jianxin Shi, PhDNational Cancer Institutevirtual

Working Groups

The department is home to a number of working groups and clubs, including:

  • Bioinformatics Working Group
  • Causal Inference Working Group / Journal Club
  • SICT (Statistical Innovation in Clinical Trials) Working Group
  • Statistical Rethinking Video Club

The Biostatistical Graduate Student Association is in charge of the student journal club, fireside chats, and more!

Lightning Talks

Each spring, the BGSA organizes a Lightning Talks event where faculty provide overviews of their research and invite discussion of future directions and potential projects, both during the session and beyond. This event has historically offered students terrific opportunities to find and connect with collaborators outside of the classroom setting

  • 2026

    The 2026 Lightning Talks were hosted on Wednesday, April, with PhD candidate and BGSA president Alexis Fleming as the moderator. Faculty with project proposals in this session included:

    • Simon Vandekar, on improving treatment effect estimates in clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease and late-life depression
    • Frank Harrell, on understanding the increasingly popular R marginaleffects package and its use of the insight package, and implementing insight functions to make marginaleffects work with the rms package
    • Bryan Shepherd, on generating and evaluating synthetic HIV cohort data using AI methods, and accounting for errors in routinely collected data using validation sampling
    • Gustavo Amorim, on enrichment sampling in two-phase designs, and transportability with auxiliary probabilistic data
    • Chris Slaughter, on using longitudinal data to better under how depression and Crohn's disease co-evolve over time
    • Cindy Chen, on improving the All of Us Research Program and target trial emulation with real-world EHR data
  • 2025

    The 2025 Lightning Talks were hosted on Wednesday, April 2, with MS student and BGSA vice president Lisa Levoir as the moderator. Faculty with project proposals in this session included:

    • Frank Harrell - improving computations for maximum likelihood estimates in ordinal regression
    • Laurie Samuels - research ethics
    • Qingyan Xiang - causal/double machine learning (MS thesis possibilities)
    • Andrew Spieker - semi-continuous exposure (MS thesis possibilities)
    • Simon Vandekar - RESI R package updates
    • Sheau-Chiann Chen - developing R package for robust Sufficient Dimension Reduction (rSDR)
    • Leena Choi - Bayesian clinical trial design for rare diseases
  • 2024

    The 2024 lightning talks took place onÌýWednesday, April 3, at 1:30 p.m. Central Time. The lineup:

    • Jonathan Schildcrout
    • Bryan Shepherd
    • Jinyuan Liu
    • Bryan Blette
    • Amber Hackstadt
    • Gustavo Amorim

    SummariesÌýof the 2024 presentations are available in the News section of this site.

    Ìý

  • 2023

    TheÌý2023 lightning talksÌýwere delivered on Wednesday, April 5. The presenters were Yaomin Xu, Siyuan Ma, Simon Vandekar, Panpan Zhang, Jinyuan Liu, Jonathan Schildcrout, Amir Asiaee, and Frank Harrell.

  • 2022

    The 2022 lightning talks were given by Frank Harrell, Ran Tao, Benjamin French, Shilin Zhao, Bryan Shepherd, Amber Hackstadt, and Amir Asiaee.