Internship Alumni
| Year | Name | Affiliation/Mentors | Project |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Durbadal Ghosh | PhD Biostatistics, Florida State University; Mentors Gregory Farage and Saunak Sen | During his internship, Durbadal contributed to the BigRiverQTL.jl Julia package designed to streamline quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis. BigRiverQTL.jl integrates multiple functionalities, including preprocessing, genome scans, and visualization tools, to facilitate efficient and accessible QTL and eQTL analysis within the Julia programming environment. He also contributed toward process improvements to the package FlxQTL.jl, a package for multivariate and longitudinal trait analyses. |
| 2024 | Shanti Sree-Edara | MPH Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Southern Mississippi; Mentors Kimberly Kelly and Chi-Yang Chiu | Shanti conducted a study on the impact of gift card challenges on the quality and quantity of research. Deployed a Qualtrics survey to NIH-funded researchers and other research groups, analyzed the data, performed cross-tabulation and ordinal regression, and presented the findings. At the end of her internship she worked on a Qualtrics survey for a skin cancer awareness project - pre and post intervention and conducted literature reviews. |
| 2024 |
Yinan Chen |
MSc Statistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Mentors Zhu Wang and Lauren Bell | Ivy examined trends in drug overdose deaths related to illicitly manufactured fentanyls (IMFs) among adolescents over. She built a linear model to analyze the changes in drug use across this demographic. At the end of her project she built an interactive web application in R Shiny to promote awareness and public engagement in drug overdose deaths. |
| 2023 | Galvin Li | MS Statistics, University of Virginia; mentors Chi-Yang Chiu and Feng Liu-Smith | NHANES data analysis to investigate the association of sex hormones with skin cancers. Galvin built multiple logistic regression to determine the association of E2, T and T/E2 levels with melanoma risk, adjusting to other relevant variables and examining potential gender-based differences. A similar analysis was performed using non-melanoma skin cancer as the outcome. |
| 2023 | Harper Kolehmainen | BS, Rhodes College; mentors Gregory Farage and Saunak Sen | Interactive Interface for Genome Scans using Pluto.jl and BulkLMM.jl packages. Harper created an interface for the Pluto.jl and BulkLMM.jl packages in Julia. Additional improvements included documentation and methodological improvisations as well as interface/API changes. |
| 2023 |
Miyeon Yeon |
PhD Candidate Biostatistics, Florida State University; mentor Hyo Young Choi | Assessment of mRNA degradation in FFPE tissue. Miyeon examined the RNA-seq data paired in FFPE and fresh frozen primary tumor tissue obtained from a subset of TCGAshe performed genome-wide comparisons of gene expression profiles between FFPE tissue and fresh frozen tissue using unsupervised/supervised clustering methods. The project looked at gene-specific as well as sample-specific degradation using SCISSOR and identified severely degraded samples in both cohorts looking for association with multiple factors such as total gene length, 3’ UTR length, GC concentration, etc. All analyses were performed in R/R Markdown. |
| 2023 | Siling Liu |
PhD Student Statistics Michigain State University, MSc Computational Science and Engineering, Rice University; mentor Qi Zhao. |
This internship focused on analyzing data from the CANDLE project entitled “Placental Epigenome-Wide Association Study of Early Childhood Body Mass Index Growth Trajectories and Overweight/Obesity Risk”. After completing her internship with us, she continued on to a PhD in Statistics program at Michigain State University. |
| 2022 | Philip Crawford | Medical Student '23 University of Tennessee Health Science Center and MS Operations Research, George Mason; mentors Saunak Sen and Jay Fowke. | Investigating the social and individual causes of benign prostatic hyperplasia in black and white men. Analyses used existing data collected in Memphis and Nashville, TN, and utilized data science methods to explore and identify race differences in the causes of benign prostatic hyperplasia. |
| 2022 | Chenhao Zhao | MSc, Dartmouth University; mentors Saunak Sen and Gregory Farage | Chenhao worked on the Matrix Linear Model package for Julia (Matrix.M.jl). Mr. Zhao expanded the documentation, increased user friendliness and created a case study to showcase MLM's benefits. The case study investigated the association between Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) patients with type II diabetes and specific pathways and patient characteristics. Chenhao is currently a Staff Statistician in our department |
| 2021 | Nadeesha Thewarapperuma | PhD student, University of Kansas Medical Center; mentors: Xiaoyu Liang and Chi-Yang Chiu | Nadeesha performed an epigenome-wide association study for identifying oral and pharyngeal carcinoma-related CpGs by utilizing functional data analysis techniques. Ms. Thewarapperuma is a current Ph.D. candidate in Biostatistics & Data Science at the University of Kansas Medical Center. |
| 2021 | Winston Miller | MS student, University of Memphis; mentors Mehmet Kocak and Fridtjof Thomas | Winston developed an R package bigBERD for generating automated biostatistic report templates. |
| 2021 | Ye Eun Bae | Phd student, Florida State University; mentor Saunak Sen | Ye Eun developed a statistical method for genetic analysis of allotetraploid species using data from switchgrass, a grass species native to North America used as biofuel. Ms. Bae is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Biostatistics at Florida State University. |
| 2021 | Zifan Yu | MS student University of Washington; mentors: Saunak Sen and Tom Juenger of UT Austin | Zifan developed a fast computational algorithm in the Julia programming language for modeling large data matrices common in high-throughput biological experiments. Zifan "Fred" Yu currently works in our department as a Statistical Programmer. |
| 2020 | (Internship paused due to COVID-19) | (Internship paused due to COVID-19) | (Internship paused due to COVID-19) |
| 2019 | Yunusa Olufadi | PhD student, University of Memphis; mentor: Fridtjof Thomas | Yunusa developed a model of kidney failure. Mr. Olufadi is currently a Biostatistician at St. Jude. |
| 2019 | Luhang Han | PhD student, University of Memphis; mentor: Chi-Yang Chiu | Luhang developed a pipeline for analyzing NIH dbGaP data. Ms. Han is currently a Data Analyst at UTHSC. |
| 2018 | Courtney Gale | Recent graduate of Furman University, 2018; mentor: Saunak Sen | Courtney worked on statistical methods for activity and weight loss data. Ms. Gale is currently a Biostatistician II at Wake Forest University. |
| 2017 | Alemayehu Wolde | PhD student, University of Memphis, 2018; mentor: Mehmet Kocak | Alemayehu developed statistical methods for growth curve modeling in the early years of life. Mr. Wolde is currently a Statistical Programmer at Sarah Cannon Research Institute. |
| 2016 | Emily Hanson | Undergraduate student, Rhodes College; mentor: Saunak Sen | Emily developed the R/lcest package for analysis of bivariate left-censored data. Ms. Hanson is currently an Actuarial Analyst at Willis Towers Watson. |