Rachel Davis, who is graduating from the University of Michigan School of Public Health with a Master of Science in Biostatistics, has always been intrigued by the immense amount of information one could learn from a dataset. She decided she wanted to use statistics to better the world in some way.
Stephen Hynes is a statistician in the medical technology division at Johnson & Johnson, work that he finds very rewarding. His team supports the research and statistical study of a line of medical devices that have been developed for people suffering with cardiac arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat that occurs when the electrical impulses that coordinate the heart's activity fail to function properly.
Serendipity has steered Tian Gu, MS ’17, PhD ‘21, from China to the United States, mechanical engineering to statistics, and corporate work to academia. Through all the lucky breaks or happy chances, Gu has discovered her niche in biostatistics. Though she said, “It was Michigan Biostatistics that chose me,” when she was pursuing a graduate degree program in statistics.
For PhD student Katherine Li, statistics are not just numbers on a screen but resources to better understand how to improve health. At Michigan, she is combining her health interests and math skills to ensure underrepresented members of the community are included in health and policy decisions.
Biostatistics master’s student Jenna Bedrava loves applying statistics to solve public health problems. Only recently did she discover she could have a career doing just that. Now she works on wastewater-based COVID surveillance and other high-impact research projects.
Katherine Hoffman was drawn to medicine and health care from a young age. When she realized that biostatistics would let her engage any other field in the health sciences, she decided to pursue it in graduate school and now loves to share the many ways a career in biostatistics can unfold.