Core Faculty

Email: arlene.ash@umassmed.edu
Arlene Ash (mathematics PhD) is keenly concerned with social justice. She pioneered tools for using administrative data to allocate health care delivery system funds, including the federal government’s “HCC” models. In 1996, she co-founded DxCG, Inc. (now part of Cotiviti, Inc.) to promote “fair and efficient health care” via predictive software. Since 2014, she has led teams incorporating both medical and social risk into global payments and quality measures for MassHealth (Massachusetts Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Programs).
Keywords: claims data, health care financing, quality measurement, policy, health equity (by race, gender, age, and geography).

Email: jonggyu.baek@umassmed.edu
My research of interest is developing/applying statistical methods in complex structural data. (e.g., longitudinal data, hierarchical data, spatially or temporally correlated data). My previous work includes Hierarchical Multiple Informants Model, (Spatially) Distributed Lag model, Bayesian Newton’s Growth Model, Sleep detection algorithm from Actigraphy data.  

Email: bruce.barton@umassmed.edu
Dr. Barton has over 49 years of experience in medical research, including study designs across the research spectrum.  He has been the lead biostatistician on over 50 clinical trials and the Principal Investigator or Director of over 40 Data Coordinating Centers (DCCs) for both NIH and pharmaceutical companies. He has published over 250 collaborative articles in medical journals.
Keywords: randomized clinical trials; broad-based medical areas; survival analysis; longitudinal analysis.  

Email: jungae.lee@umassmed.edu
Dr. Lee is focused on developing statistical methods for effective inference and classification in a large dimension relative to the sample size. She adeptly integrates theoretical expertise with practical application, specializing in analyzing complex datasets such as gene expression and microbiome data, linking to cancer, chronic disease, and liver disease research. Dr. Lee has taught courses including Principles of Experimentation, Experimental Designs, Regression, R Programming, and Generalized Linear Models.  
Keywords: Nonparametric statistics, clinical trials/experimental designs, survival analysis, missing data, EHR data analysis, and high dimension compositional data.

Email: eric.mick@umassmed.edu
Dr. Mick is a psychiatric and genetic epidemiologist.  His methodological areas of interest are epidemiology (descriptive and clinical), analysis of “big-data” (genomic research and administrative databases), and multivariate methods for longitudinal data. He is pursuing research and clinical interventions aimed at addressing and reducing healthcare disparities in patients served by the UMMS system.  He hopes to build upon these collaborations to identify opportunities for addressing healthcare disparities associated with severe mental illnesses.  

Email: sharina.person@umassmed.edu
Serves as Associate Director and a senior faculty member in the Quantitative Methods Core which provides consultative services to UMass Chan investigators in the areas of study design, sample size, power calculations, statistical analysis plans, statistical programming, data entry and management, and project coordination.  Her research interests include randomized controlled trials, coordinating center operations and methods, quality assurance, and statistical modeling, particularly in large-scale collaborative research studies. Additionally, she has extensive experience with cluster randomization and hierarchical models, mixed-model methodology, and longitudinal studies.  

Email: bo.wang@umassmed.edu
Bo Wang is a tenured Professor with extensive research in HIV prevention, implementation science, and advanced study design and statistical modeling (including MOST/SMART). His implementation science research focuses on theory-driven strategies to sustain HIV prevention in The Bahamas. He also leads projects developing mHealth interventions for PrEP use and stigma reduction in Thailand and for improving self-management of HIV and substance use in Zambia. He serves on the NIH's SIHH Study Section (2023-2027).

Email: chengwu.yang@umassmed.edu
Trained in Medicine, Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Psychometrics, Dr. Yang is an interdisciplinary health science investigator. Earlier in his career, Dr. Yang was primarily a collaborative scientist, focusing on collaborations with clinicians across wide disciplines in hospitals, medical and dental schools in China, Europe, and the U.S.

Email: chan.zhou@umassmed.edu
Develop computational methods to analyze large-scale high throughput multi omics data in genetics and disease to advance precision medicine. Employ mathematical/statistical modeling, AI, and machine learning to explore long noncoding RNAs, circular RNAs, and RNA modifications . Develop methods and software to decode RNA epigenetics and noncoding RNAs. Utilize data mining to uncover regulatory roles of noncoding RNAs and RNA epigenetics in genetics and disease. Computationally analyze complex data to discover RNA-based diagnostics, prognosis, and therapeutics