Congratulations to recent PhD graduate Chiara Di Gravio and her dissertation advisers, professor Jonathan Schildcrout and associate professor Ran Tao, on the publication of Efficient designs and analysis of two-phase studies with longitudinal binary data in the March 2024 issue of Biometrics. The paper presents a flexible full-cohort analysis method known as an efficient sieve maximum likelihood estimator (SMLE).

Contributors to this study include research assistant professor Liping Du and associate professor Hakmook Kang.

The final 2023 issue of International Journal of Statistics and Probability included "The Vanderbilt Nigeria Biostatistics Training Program (VN-BioStat): Results from a Skills Workshop." Professor and principal investigator Bryan Shepherd is first author of this paper, written in collaboration with Vanderbilt colleagues in the Institute for Global Health, the Division of Infectious Diseases, the Department of Health Po

We are excited to welcome Mackenzie Stuenkel to the department and the Vanderbilt Biostatistics Data Coordinating Center Data Management Unit. Dr. Stuenkel earned her PhD in applied health research and evaluation from Clemson University, and then worked as lead research specialist at the Bradshaw Institute for Community Child Health & Advocacy, a division of Prisma Health Children's Hospital.

We are pleased to announce the promotion of Dr. Simon Vandekar (left, with VN-Biostat fellows Rukayya Alkassim and Safiya Sada Sani and perhaps a future biostatistician) to associate professor of biostatistics (investigator track, with tenure), effective as of February 1.

We are delighted to welcome Lauren E. King to the department as our new research program manager. King earned her bachelor's degree in nutrition and wellness, with a minor in public health, from Auburn University, followed by her master's of public health with a concentration in epidemiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.