History

In the early 1980's, two biostatisticians joined the faculty of the Department of Medicine.  In 1984 they were joined by a third member and formed the Section of Biostatistics within the Regenstrief Institute for Health Care.  The collaborative work soon extended beyond both the Department of Medicine and the School of Medicine.  The Section became an acknowledged Division of the Department of Medicine in the late 1980’s.  Today, the Division has 14 faculty members who work with researchers in the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, and Nursing.  The support staff includes a number of masters-level biostatisticians and data managers.  The expanded faculty has also taken on new responsibilities in the education of graduate students and clinical fellows.

Mission

The Division of Biostatistics on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis campus is a working group of statistical and data professionals who provide leadership in statistical techniques in biostatistics and bioinformatics, data management, and data integration.

Our mission is carried out through collaborative research, statistical research, education, and service activities. We partner and foster collaboration with researchers in the health sciences in the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Informatics, Nursing, Science, and all others who seek our expertise in study design, statistical analysis, and data management. Our research spectrum is ever expanding and spans areas of clinical, laboratory, epidemiologic, behavioral, and health services studies.

Vision

The Division of Biostatistics endeavors to improve health and well-being in the State of Indiana and throughout the world through excellence in integrating innovative and state-of-the-art statistical and data management methodologies with other health sciences research. We strive for national and international recognition in our areas of expertise as we reach out to all biomedical researchers on campus through collaborative and statistical research, education, and service.   As science and technology advance, we seek to be at the forefront of techniques required to translate research from scientific concepts into valuable knowledge for clinical implementation.

Teaching Activities

The Division is responsible for the teaching of biostatistics and epidemiology to students and clinical fellows.  The Division offers training opportunities to several groups of students.   

The Division teaches a two-semester course in statistics for graduate students and post-graduate clinical fellows from various departments in the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, and Nursing. This course provides basic statistical knowledge and computer skills.  It prepares these students to design their own research projects and analyze data using a wide variety of statistical techniques.

Outside the School of Medicine, the faculty teaches a course required for all graduate students (post-D.D.S.) in the School of Dentistry.  This broad introduction to study design and statistical analysis is one of the six designated core courses required for all dental graduate students at the start of their training.  It also teaches a course geared toward students in the School of Nursing’s Ph.D. program.  The course includes topics in multivariate analysis such as factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

Finally, the Division periodically offers a course entitled “Biostatistics for Physicians: A Short Course.”  This course runs three successive half-days and has been offered approximately every 18 months.  The course, stressing concepts rather than a mastery of technique, is open to clinicians both within and outside Indiana University.  CME credit is available for those attending the course.

Research Activities

The major activities of the Division involve collaborative and independent research.  The degree of collaboration varies with different projects.  These activities include study design, data management, data analysis, and interpretation of results.  Thus, the biostatistician and support staff are usually involved in all aspects of the research, from conceptualizing the study to the eventual writing of final reports and manuscripts.  A major component of biostatistical collaboration involves the choice and implementation of appropriate analytical methods for the resulting research data.  In some cases, these research activities require modification of available statistical methods and/or the development of new statistical procedures to meet the unique needs of a particular project.  Thus, the collaborative and independent research components are inter-connected and mutually reinforcing.

Currently, the Division faculty are co-investigators on a number of research projects in various subspecialties of Medicine, (e.g., Clinical Pharmacology, Endocrinology, Hematology, Oncology, Rheumatology), and in the General Clinical Research Center (GCRC), Health Services Research, Neurology, Otolaryngology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Radiology and the School of Nursing.  The faculty also serve as Directors of individual projects or Biostatistics Cores in a number of NIH-funded centers and program projects, including the Cancer Center, Midwest Sexually Transmitted Diseases Cooperative Research Center, Alzheimer’s Disease Center, Center for Enhancing Quality of Life in Chronic Illness, bone and osteoporosis research program project, shock-wave lithotripsy program project, and program project for research in the detection and treatment of early caries.

In addition, members of our faculty are the principal investigators on several grants.

Dr. Constantin Yiannoutsos is the PI of a NIH funded grant (through the University of Rochester) entitled “HIV Associated Cognitive Impairment and Oxidative Stress: An In-Vivo Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Study of Cerebral Injury”.

Dr. Patrick Monahan is the PI of three grants, “Improving Item Bias Detection in Cancer Control Scales” (NIH), “Modification of the Mantel-Haenszel Procedure for Improving Accuracy in the Detection of Differential Item Function in Cancer Screening Questionnaires (Walther Cancer Institute), and “Development and Validation of Patient Preference for Diabetes Treatment (Eli Lilly & Co.).

Dr. Sujuan Gao is the PI on two NIH funded grants, “Selenium Levels and Cognitive Decline in Rural Elderly Chinese”, and “Statistical Methods in Longitudinal Studies of Dementia”.

Finally, Dr. Wanzhu Tu is the PI on a NIH funded grant entitled “Statistical Tools for Daily STD/HIV Behavioral Reports”.

Service Activities

For many research projects, the Division provides complete support of data management from the initial design of forms, through setting up, entering, and maintaining databases, data entry and verification, and finally, preparing data for analyses.  The Division also provides advice to researchers on the choice of computer software for various purposes.