MD Jobayer Hossain, PhD

Biography

I am a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Biomedical Research and the Director of the Biostatistics Program at Nemours, as well as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Economics and Statistics at University of Delaware. My research interests focus on the innovative application of statistical methods to ensure effectiveness in studies involving clinical, epidemiological, and public health research. As the director of the Biostatistics Program, I lead core activities of the theoretical development and innovative application of statistical methods, and provide statistical direction and technical oversight for projects of interdisciplinary collaboration that require statistical input. Specifically, I provide expert-level input to research projects of various sizes, scopes, phases and levels of funding, and provide statistical support to clinical researchers in designing clinical trials, pre-clinical, epidemiological, and survey studies; power and sample size calculation; randomization; data management; and data analysis; and in authoring the statistical section in research protocols, manuscripts, abstracts, and presentations. I have broad research collaborations with clinicians of many different disciplines, and I have led several of studies as principal investigator (PI) including a NIH COBRE pilot grant to investigate early childhood growth patterns using Nemours electronic health records. I also provide training and education on skills of statistics and analytical software at Nemours and affiliated institutions. My own and collaborative work have produced illustrative methodological innovation and explored etiologic pathways and health trends in diverse pediatric populations to improve the health of children affected by a broad range of diseases, disorders, and health conditions, including pediatric obesity, asthma, allergy, diabetes, and cancer. In addition to routine statistical modeling of data, my current research interests include tracking changes in health trajectories over time (e.g., childhood growth trajectories); identifying refraction of health trajectories around critical events (e.g., medical diagnosis); recognizing hidden patterns in longitudinal changes (e.g., growth patterns) or in correlated variables of overlapping as well as contrasting characteristics in cross-sectional data; forming classes of distinct patterns; and identifying individual- as well as community-level demographic, clinical and other features responsible for diverse trajectories. In my career as a statistician, I have many years of experience applying statistical methodology in clinical, epidemiological, pharmaceutical, and financial settings. The scope of my work includes cross-sectional, longitudinal, case-control, and survey data analyses; application of linear and nonlinear regressions in both cross-sectional and longitudinal settings; mixed and random effects; multilevel analysis; survival analysis; time series analysis; statistical learning and cluster analysis; principal component and factor analyses; propensity score; bootstrap; cross-validation; G-estimation; and other parametric and nonparametric statistical techniques. I have participated in clinical trials (phases I-IV) of efficacy, safety, pharmacokinetic, and pharmacodynamics in many therapeutic areas. I provide training and education on skills in statistical analysis, study design, as well as for analytical software programs including SAS, R, S-Plus, SPSS, M-Plus, and STATA to researchers, medical fellows, research associates, and junior biostatisticians at Nemours through classes, seminars, and one-on-one meetings. I also teach graduate and undergraduate statistics courses as an adjunct faculty member of Applied Economics and Statistics at the University of Delaware. My graduate course work covered a wide range of areas in statistics (classical and Bayesian), biostatistics, population science (demography), data mining and statistical learning, mathematics (numerical mathematics and optimization theory), probability (measure theoric, stochastic, and inferential statistics), computer sciences, and economics. I am a lead or co-author for 121 published articles and more than 200 published abstracts and presentations. I am actively involved in scientific, educational, and research activities. My academic training and extensive work experience in statistics, epidemiology, and biometry have prepared me to be an effective research and teaching faculty in relevant fields.