Institute for Health Care Delivery Science

TCI Biostatistics Shared Resource Facility

Our biostatisticians play a key role in multidisciplinary cancer research in a variety of ways, including designing studies to address pertinent hypotheses; guiding the creation of appropriate databases; ensuring the feasibility of the planned analyses; analyzing study data; providing proper interpretation of results; and developing novel design and analytic methods.

Given the diversity of scientific expertise and research within the Tisch Cancer Institute (TCI), the Biostatistics Shared Resource Facility (BSRF) provides support to a substantial number of projects, encompassing a broad research spectrum. With this in mind, our principal objective at BSRF is to provide biostatisticians with expertise in diverse types of cancer as well as a comprehensive coverage of statistical methodologies. Specifically, the four aims of BSRF are to:

  • Establish a scientific and administrative structure that supports investigators from a broad background and creates a collegial environment
  • Provide high-quality consultation in research design and biostatistical analysis
  • Train laboratory and clinical investigators in the quantitative aspects of research
  • Support methodological research for development of innovative research design and implementation of newly published analytic methods

The BSRF is available to any cancer investigator in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, whether you are a basic scientist, clinician, epidemiologist, psychologist, behavioral scientist, or other type of researcher. As an investigator you are able to access the facility via online requests for new projects through the facility website or by contacting the members directly for work on ongoing investigations.

The shared resource director will respond to online requests for statistical supports using the priority formulation of:

  • P1A. Planning of Investigator-Initiated clinical studies
  • P1B. Preparation of NCI/NIH grant submission
  • P1C. Analysis of NCI/NIH funded projects (presentation to scientific meetings and manuscript submission are given higher prioritization)
  • P2A. Preparation of grant submission to non-NIH agencies
  • P2B. Analysis for projects funded by non-NIH agencies (presentation to scientific meetings and manuscript submission are given higher prioritization
  • P3. All others (unfunded exploratory or training related work)

To request services please complete our service request form

How long does it take for statistical service timelines?

All Your requests received through our service request form will be assigned to a TCI-BSRF statistician within two business days. Once assigned, a statistician will respond to your inquiry within three business days to arrange for the first meeting. Timeline for the work to be done will be discussed in this meeting. For interventional investigator initiated protocols, movement to PRMC requires approval from the ‘Biostatistics Design Workshop’ (BDW), a committee of all statisticians in the TCI-BSRF that meets weekly on Thursdays from 2-3 pm. For grant applications, time for development of the statistical sections for a grant also ranges between 2-4 weeks depending on the readiness of the proposal in terms of having all information needed for writing the statistical sections.

Core Members

Faculty

Madhu Mazumdar, PhD: Dr. Mazumdar is the Director of the Biostatistics Shared Resource Facility and is responsible for the recruitment, retention, training, assignment and prioritization of consulting requests to BSRF biostatisticians. She is well known nationally and internationally for establishing biostatistics units and has extensively published on this topic. She led the reform effort of the TCI-BSRF expeditiously by following ten strategies and shared the experiences and success metrics in a perspective piece published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Mazumdar is also a sought-after collaborator on projects spanning from laboratory research, clinical trials, and healthcare delivery research and has published >150 manuscripts in oncology of 280 total publications.

John Mandeli, PhD: Dr. Mandeli’s research interests focus on both statistical theory and applications. A major area of interest is the combinatorial construction of new experimental designs. He is also working on the statistical design and analysis of cancer clinical trials with emphasis on proper design and analysis of Phase I and Phase II clinical trials, the application of stopping rules, multistage designs, and classical experimental design theory to cancer clinical and laboratory study design.

Gary Winkel, PhD: Dr. Winkel is a Research Professor in the Department of Population Health Science and Policy. For the past fifteen years, he has worked with researchers in Cancer Prevention and Control on a variety of topics. Dr. Winkel is a specialist in research design and applied statistical analysis with emphases on longitudinal data analysis and structural equation modeling. In Cancer Prevention and Control, he is responsible for assisting investigators with issues of research design, statistical analysis, and power analysis.  In addition, he is responsible for the management of study outcome assessments, assurance of data integrity, and assessment of key study endpoints.

Xiaoyu Song, Dr.Ph: Dr. Song’s research interests include the development of statistical theories and applications for multi-omics integrative analysis, quantile regression, high-dimensional data analysis, estimating equation, longitudinal data analysis and case-control studies. Her application fields include genomic and proteomic studies, cancer research, functional genomics, and adolescent health.

Non-Faculty

Erin Moshier, MS:  As managing director of the Biostatistics Shared Resource Facility, Ms. Moshier worked extensively with Dr. Mazumdar to reform the Biostatistics Core for Tisch Cancer Institute (NCI). She provides mentorship and training to junior and senior team statisticians and coordinates and monitors their workload to ensure each member is meeting core productivity goals. She manages all financial contracts between core members and clinical groups while acting independently as lead statistician on four long term contracts with various cancer programs.  Ms. Moshier co-chairs the Biostatistics Design Workshop, a committee charged with reviewing all interventional investigator-initiated cancer clinical trial protocols and improving their statistical design and analytical plans to meet NCI standards. She has co-authored more than 50 publications in oncology of 115 total publications.

Kezhen Fei, MS:  Ms. Fei has over six years of experience in database management and analysis.  She has extensive experience in SAS programming and collaborates with investigators in community based trials in breast and ovarian cancer. She is developing skills in analyzing high-dimensional databases from electronic health record system and discharge-based databases.

Administrative Support

Denise Williams: Ms. Williams is the administrative assistant to the Biostatistics Shared Resource Facility. In this position, Ms. Williams is the main organizer of conferences and meetings for our core. She also assists in organization and set up of budget spreadsheets for grant submissions as well as tracking and compiling our core’s productivity metrics including number of grant submissions, FTE on grant submissions, financial contracts, publications, and consulting requests.

Affiliated Members

Affiliate members are called upon for their special skills in biostatistics, bioinformatics, data science, genetics, economics, qualitative research, decision science, and epidemiology if TCI projects are in need of these skills.

Institute for Healthcare Delivery Science in the Department of Population Health Science & Policy

Institute for Translational Epidemiology in the Department of Population Health Science

  • Naomi Alpert, MS
  • William Lieberman-Cribbin, MPH
  • Joel Erblich, PhD

Department of Population Health Science & Policy

  • Nathalia Egorova, PhD

Center for Biostatistics in the Department of Population Health Science & Policy

Department of Environmental Medicine & Public Health

Department of Population Health Science & Policy and Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences

Department of Diagnostic, Molecular and Interventional Radiology

  • Rowena Yip, MPH