Apoorva Goyal’s interest in statistics and data science evolved gradually, influenced by a combination of academic experiences and the growing demand for data analytics in various fields. Today, her dream job involves combining her passion for genetics research with data science to drive innovations in precision medicine within a startup setting.
genetics
UConn Department of Statistics Celebrates 60th Anniversary
A special conference with the theme “Excellence in Statistical Science” was a high note in a series of year-long activities celebrating the anniversary.
Section on Statistics in Genomics and Genetics Works Hard to Serve Membership
The new ASA Section on Statistics in Genomics and Genetics has been active this past year hosting webinars, organizing career panel discussions, communicating through new social media accounts, and circulating a member survey.
Simina Boca
Simina Boca grew up in Bucharest, Romania, and participated in many math contests as a kid. Her best result was fourth place nationally in the ninth grade, but she was pretty sure she didn’t want to focus on pure math as a career. When she attended a genetics class her senior year in high school in the United States, she discovered biostatistics and majored in math at the University of Illinois. Along the way, she realized she enjoyed working with data and thinking about data. From a professional perspective, her proudest moment was convincing collaborators to rerun an experiment because the initial one had pronounced batch effects that could not be fixed at the analysis stage.
Lorin Crawford
While Lorin Crawford was writing his honors thesis on semigroup theory, he decided he no longer wanted to work on pure math problems but instead wanted to focus on more immediate real-world applications. Today, as RGSS Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at Brown University, his lab includes a mixture of postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate researchers in applied math, biostatistics, computational biology, and computer science. And even though his work earned him recognition as a member of The Root 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2019, the most rewarding part of his job to him is having the unique opportunity to mentor people with such diverse skill sets, thought patterns, and social backgrounds.
Laura Hatfield
Laura Hatfield grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, as a classic nerdy kid interested in math and science. She began college on a pre-med route, but while doing medical research at Johns Hopkins, she learned she wanted to design studies and analyze data. After several years immersed in health policy research, she co-founded the Heath Policy Data Science Lab with Sherri Rose at Harvard.
Boston Chapter Honors Herman Chernoff on 95th Birthday
A day-long symposium was held at Harvard University April 27 to commemorate Herman Chernoff’s 95th birthday.
Michigan Tech Student Talks About Future Career in Genetics
The ASA shines the spotlight on member Shurong Fang, a PhD student at Michigan Technological University. Read on to find out how she has been working to develop efficient approaches to investigating the genetic association between human genes and complex diseases such as diabetes.
Short Course on Statistical Genetics and Genomics Planned
The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Section on Statistical Genetics will offer the second annual National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)–funded short course, “Statistical Genetics and Genomics,” from July 9–13.
UAB Hosts Genetics Short Course
The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s (UAB) Section on Statistical Genetics announces a short course, Next-Generation Sequencing: Technology and Statistical Methods, on December 13–16 at UAB in Birmingham and HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Alabama.