Events

Past Event

Biostats Lecture: Advancing Biomedical Data Science...

February 4, 2025
11:45 AM - 1:00 PM
America/New_York
Allan Rosenfield Building, 722 W. 168 St., New York, NY 10032 Hess Commons

Tuessday, Februaruy 4th, ARB Hess Commons, 11:45am
Guest Lecture 

 

Ying Cui, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Biomedical Data Science
Stanford University

Advancing Biomedical Data Science: From Population Insights to Personalized Decisions

Abstract: 

Rapid advances in biomedicine have enabled us to address important questions that were once intractable. There is a pressing need for analyzing massive data sets emerging from cutting-edge technologies, presenting challenges such as high-dimensionality and multi-modality. Additionally, there has been rising interests in personalized decision-making. Inspired by these challenges, my research aims to enhance the integration of statistical insights and data science innovations in biomedical research. In this talk, I will cover two projects.

The first part of the talk explores key questions about identifying covariates relevant to clinical outcomes of interest. Addressing these questions, however, can be complicated due to the presence of complex covariate effects. To tackle this problem, I developed a new testing and screening framework by adopting a global view via the novel concept of interval quantile independence. I showed that this general testing framework can naturally yield both unconditional and conditional screening procedures for ultra-high dimensional settings and enjoy the sure screening property.

In the second part of the talk, I address the feature selection problem from a personalized perspective. I designed a novel dynamic prediction rule to determine the optimal order of acquiring features in predicting clinical outcomes of interest for individual subject. The goal is to optimize model performance while reducing the costs associated with measuring features. To achieve this, I employed reinforcement learning, where the agent decides the best action at each step: either making a final decision or continuing to collect new predictors. The proposed approach mirrors and improves real life decision-making processes, employing a “learn-as-you-go” paradigm.

 

About the Biostatistics Departmental Seminars & Lectures for Spring 2025:

During the Fall and Spring semesters, the Department of Biostatistics holds regular seminars on Thursdays, called the Levin Lecture Series, on a wide variety of topics which are of interest to both students and faculty. Over each semester, there are also often guest lectures outside the regular Thursday Levin Lecture Series, to provide a robust schedule the covers the wide range of topics in Biostatistics. The speakers are invited guests who spend the day of their seminar discussing their research with Biostatistics faculty and students. All members of the Columbia Community are welcome, though most lectures are held in the Medical Center Campus and require a CUIMC ID to enter the building. No registration is necessary to attend.

**Lectures are in-person only unless marked otherwise.**

 

Contact Information

Erin Elliott