Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University asked to “interview” me for a profile about biostatistics faculty. Here’s what I said…
Tell us about yourself, your background: I am originally from St. Louis and a first-generation college student. My dad was an apartment building maintenance man and my mom stayed at home to take care of my two siblings and me while working part-time telephone marketing jobs. I went to a public school in a blue collar suburb that was part of the desegregation intervention of the 1980’s to mix black children from the city into predominantly white schools in the suburbs. I mention this because I think it left an important imprint on me about the many values of diversity in education and in society more broadly. A high school guidance counselor encouraged and helped me to apply for scholarships and a Pell grant for college. With that, and also with part time jobs at McDonald’s and a paper factory, I paid my way through college at Truman State University in Kirksville Missouri to get a BS in mathematics with a minor in physics. My college advisor encouraged me to go to graduate school, suggesting I go into math at Iowa State University.
I was accepted into the math program at Iowa State with a teaching assistantship, but after my first semester I realized I was much more interested in statistics. I transferred to the statistics department, where I was the sole instructor for an undergrad statistics class each semester for the next 4 years. I finished my PhD in 1998 with a dissertation titled “On nonlinear structural equation modeling” working with Yasuo Amemiya.
I then took a position as an assistant professor of biostatistics in the school of public health at the University of Minnesota. There I found the fast-paced world of NIH research grants and collaborations with epidemiologist, health policy researchers, and medical doctors to be very stimulating. I collaborated on research projects examining predictors of obesity and substance abuse using surveys and administrative databases. I was the statistical reviewer on many NIH review panels and also started a graduate course on latent variable and structural equation modeling for health sciences which was new for the department of biostatistics. I was eventually promoted to full professor with tenure.
When did you come to Columbia? In 2010 I joined to the Columbia University psychiatry department and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) which has a very large and active research portfolio with its own dedicated biostatistics group. Given my expertise in latent variable models and psychometrics and my enthusiasm for applied collaborations, it was a very good fit. In 2012, I was appointed the director of the biostatistics division in the Department of Psychiatry/NYSPI and over the last 7 years, I have grown the division to include 14 full-time biostatisticians.
What are the some of the research areas in psychiatry you collaborate on? The division of biostatistics in psychiatry participates in extensive statistical collaborations with over 50 psychiatry researchers in any given year, providing statistical expertise and analysis to projects, including: biomarkers from brain imaging and neurocognitive tasks for mood and anxiety disorders and psychosis; clinical trials of new pharmacotherapies and psychotherapies for psychiatric and neurological disorders, including building treatment decision rules; implementation studies of support service programs for mental health treatment and prevention; measurement studies for improving psychometrics of diagnosis instruments in substance use disorders, depression, and biological aging; cohort studies of child-adolescent development of psychiatric and substance use disorders; causal analysis of prescribing practices monitored from medical claims records; momentary assessment studies of cardiovascular response to emotions and stress markers related to suicide; and much more.
Why change the name of the division to Mental Health Data Science? In 2018, I decided to rename the biostatistics group in psychiatry to be called the division of Mental Health Data Science (https://www.columbiapsychiatry.org/mental-health-data-science). Our new name really represented a “re-branding” which was meant to exemplify our mission to embrace new and emerging data collection and processing technologies (e.g. multimodal neuroimaging, wearable devices, and electronic health systems) and to reflect our expertise in providing and developing analytic tools for making sense of these complex data domains.
What do you enjoy doing in your time outside work? I have a 10 year old kid and as much as possible we try to explore the city, go to plays, events, and be outside in the parks including taking trips to the ocean. Having spent all of my life before 2010 in the Midwest, I enjoy taking opportunities to go to the ocean which is now just a car ride away.