Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics Newsletter

Message from the Chair

Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo

Friends and colleagues,

Happy Fall! I hope all of you had a great summer and are energized for the start of the academic year. A special welcome to all of our new students, staff and faculty who are joining our DEB family.

In June we announced the winners of our DEB 2018 Good Ideas Contest. If you missed the contest, you can find details of the proposals here https://open-proposals.ucsf.edu/deb/ideas-2018. Congratulations to our winners whose ideas will form the basis for some of our departmental investments in this upcoming year.

  • Trainee Award: Anusha Vable
  • Staff Award: Susan Rubin
  • Junior Faculty Award: Erin Van Blarigan
  • Faculty Award: John Witte, Margaret Handley, and Lydia Zablotska
  • Honorable Mentions to Jeff Martin for the most proposals and to Maria Glymour for reminding us of the importance of functional dry erase markers and canceled meetings.

The Good Ideas Contest is just one of the many ways we are working to advance our five DEB Strategic Priority Areas:

  1. Faculty and Staff Development
  2. Communication and Cohesion
  3. Strategic Partnerships
  4. Integration of our Educational Programs
  5. One Big Idea

Several workgroups have been actively engaged in these areas, and I appreciate the engagement of faculty, staff and students who have devoted their time to these efforts.

How our department is organized can help facilitate the advancement of our scholarship and educational missions, the development of our faculty, and our departmental cohesion. Over the next few months we will be re-evaluating our DEB division structure and approach to departmental leadership to assure we are organized in the best way to achieve our goals. This area will be the focus of a departmental retreat and upcoming ALL DEB and DEB Faculty Meetings. You should have received information about how to provide input into this important process, and I welcome your thoughts.

Wishing you all the best for an excellent start to the academic year!

Kirsten

  HONORS & NEWS
Maria Glymour

Maria Glymour is a social media star. Her LinkedIn post, “Epidemiology and why I love it,” has 422 likes on LinkedIn, more than 500 likes and about 250 retweets on Twitter.

 Meyeon Park

Meyeon Park, MD, MAS and Rebecca Graff, PhD will lead a one-month intensive course for 3rd year medical students, in March 2019, entitled Designing and Conducting Research. The course is derived from the DEB long-standing, successful “Designing Clinical Research” series.

Patience Afulani

The department welcomes four new faculty members, who joined over the summer or will be joining shortly: Patience Afulani, assistant professor, Brittany Chambers, assistant professor, Kim Rhoads, director of the Office of Community Outreach in the Diller Family Cancer Center, and Catherine Oldenburg, secondary faculty based at the Proctor Foundation. Read more about them on our website.

More News:

  • Service milestones: Congratulations to the following people who achieved significant service milestones in 2017. On Friday, August 10, 2018, the campus held a celebration event recognizing employees who had reached 10 years of service or more in 2017! They included:
    • 25 years of service: Binh Dam and Chris Gehrman
    • 20 years of service: Alaric Battle and Myrna Diaz
    • 15 years of service: Jason Maeda
  • Please welcome new employees who have joined the department since July 1:
    • Lorena Amastal
    • Alison Canchola
    • Tracy Cao
    • Ann Carballo
    • Pui Pui Chan
    • Kathleen Davidson-Allen
    • Christine Duffy
    • Nadine Dyke
    • Roxabeth Frausto
    • Todd Golden
    • Walid (Will) Halda
    • Karen Homan
    • Zarina Jalil
    • Mary Kenoyer
    • Kamala Kowshik
    • Kathie Lau
    • Eileen Leong
    • Patrick Lewis
    • Daphne Lichtensztajn
    • Lanilaine Lorenzana
    • Zinnia Loya
    • Meg McKinley
    • Anil Narayan
    • Debora Oh
    • Roxanna Pitchford
    • Claudine Reyes
    • Heather Rose
    • David Rost
    • Indu Sankaran
    • Lisa Shelton-Herendeen
    • Rasmey Thach
  • Also welcome our newest and largest cohort of PhD students: Sandeep Brar, Jean Digitale, Michelle Devost, Alice Guan, Sepehr Hashemi, Zara Izadi, Erika Meza, Sarah Raifman, Marta Sanluciano-Palenzuela and Eduardo Santiago.
  • In case you missed it: Important Cancer Tracking Registry to Relocate to UCSF

If you have news or honors you’d like to submit for an upcoming newsletter, send an email with the details to Anne Wolf.

 

  EVENTS AND DEADLINES
  • Department meeting
    Friday, Sept. 14, 11 am, MH-1401/02; lunch served following the meeting
  • Mathematical Models of Vaccine-Preventable Disease in California: Influenza, Measles, and Varicella
    Sarah Ackley
    Friday, Sept. 14, 12:30 pm, MH-1401/02
  • The Stratified Micro-Randomized Trial with Application to Mobile Health
    Annual UCSF Invited Lecture in Biostatistics and Bioinformatics
    Susan Murphy, PhD, Harvard University
    Wednesday, Sept. 26, 3 pm, MH-2700
  • Epi Tools Workshop
    Melinda Power
    Monday, Oct. 1, 12 pm, MH-1407
  • From Learning Gait Signatures to Revelation of Multi-Scale Dependency in Musculoskeletal System
    Fushing Hsieh, PhD, UC Davis
    Wednesday, Oct. 10, 3 pm, MH-2700
  • Department Picnic
    Saturday, Oct. 13, 12 to 4 pm
    Lake Temescal Park North Picnic Area

  PUBLICATIONS