About
The FIU-STATCONSULT has the mission to enhance FIU’s research enterprise by providing infrastructure support relevant to biostatistics, bioinformatics, data science, data management and data quality enhancement. It supports faculty investigators, research staff and graduate students for grant proposal preparation, study and experimental design concepts, data collection, data management, statistical analyses, study operations, report and manuscript preparation and beyond. It is integrated both in terms of drawing on expertise from and providing support to investigators within and outside of FIU. It works in close collaboration with the Center for Children and Families (CCF) of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing and Health Sciences, College of Engineering and Computing and other schools and colleges at FIU. It also collaborates with entities outside the university such as hospitals, health care networks, and community and government organizations. All FIU-STATCONSULT personnel (affiliated faculty and staff) are required to be certified in human subjects’ research, HIPAA and data security awareness.
Center Faculty and Staff
Zoran Bursac, PhD, MPH
Director, Professor and Chair of Biostatistics
Dr. Bursac is a Professor and Chair in the Department of Biostatistics at the Stempel College of Public Health and Director of the FIU Center for Statistical Consulting and Collaboration (FIU-STATCONSULT) at Florida International University.
Areas of Specialty include Longitudinal Data Methods, Analysis with Missing Data, Models for Discrete Data.
Stephanie J. Garcia, MPH, MSHRM
Center Coordinator and Biostatistician
Ms. Garcia is a Research Scientist in the Department of Biostatistics at the Stempel College of Public Health and Statistical Computing Director and REDCap Administrator of the FIU Center for Statistical Consulting and Collaboration (FIU-STATCONSULT).
Stefanie N. Moore, MPH
Biostatistician
Stefanie Moore graduated from Stempel College’s MPH program with a concentration in biostatistics in 2016. She worked as a graduate assistant for the FIU-STATCONSULT during her two years in the program and was hired as biostatistician following her graduation.
Ingrid Gonzalez, MPH
Biostatistician
Ingrid received her Master of Public Health in Biostatistics from Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work in 2019 at FIU. During her two years in the program, she worked as a graduate assistant for the FIU-STATCONSULT center (previously known as the Integrated Biostatistics and Data Management Center).
Affiliated Faculty
Tan Li, PhD
Associate Professor of Biostatistics
Dr. Tan Li received his doctoral degree in statistics in 2011 from the University of South Carolina. He joined the Department of Biostatistics at Florida International University (FIU) in 2012 and is currently an assistant professor and deputy director of the FIU-STATCONSULT Center.
Areas of speciality include: Ordinal Data Analysis; Multilevel Mixture Models; Longitudinal Data Analysis.
Michelle Hospital, PhD
Research Associate Professor of Biostatistics
Dr. Michelle Hospital is the Associate Director of Research and Development of FIU’s Community-Based Research Institute (CBRI). She also currently serves as a co-leader of South Florida’s first Health Disparities Research Center at a Minority Institution (RCMI) from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD).
Areas of specialty include: Structural Equation Modeling; Weighted Data; Data Analysis for Intervention Studies; Health Disparities; Youth Risk Behavior Program Evaluation.
Boubakari Ibrahimou, PhD
Associate Professor of Biostatistics
Dr. Boubakari Ibrahimou graduated from the University of South Florida with doctoral degrees in mathematics and biostatistics. He is an assistant professor of biostatistics in the Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work and is also the deputy director of the FIU-STATCONSULT Center, where he collaborates and consults with clinicians, public health professionals, scientists, engineers and social science researchers.
Area of specialty include: Correlated Data; Nonlinear and Survival Analysis.
Emir Veledar, PhD
Courtesy Professor, Department of Biostatistics
Dr. Emir Veledar is the director of predictive health analytics and outcomes at Baptist Health South Florida (BHSF) and a faculty member in the Department of Biostatistics. From 1990 to 1993, he was an assistant professor at the University of Mostar and the University of Sarajevo. In 1993, he became a visiting researcher at Tilburg University in Netherlands. From 1994 to 1998, he taught mathematics at the University of Georgia, and was appointed assistant professor of statistics at James Madison University in Virginia in 1998. In January 1999, he moved to the Cardiology Division at Emory University and, in 2013, to Baptist Health South Florida.
Areas of specialty include: Healthcare Statistics, Prediction Data Mining, Meta Analysis
Changwon Yoo, PhD
Associate Professor of Biostatistics
Dr. Yoo’s research focuses on developing and disseminating innovative statistical methods for Big Data Analytics (BDA). His research draws from statistical machine learning, genomics, and neuroscience and seeks to identify and build statistical methods in big data such as genomics, proteomics, neuroimaging and clinical data.
Area of speciality includes Statistical Methods for Big Data Analytics.
Florence George, PhD
Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics
Florence George joined FIU as an Assistant Professor of Statistics in August 2007, soon after she graduated with her PhD in Statistics from University of South Florida. She did her M.S (Statistics) at Mahatma Gandhi University, M. Phil. (Statistics) at Cochin University of Science & Technology and Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Science & Applications at University of Kerala, all in India.
Areas of Specialty include: Applied Statistics, Distribution Theory and Biostatistics.
Nan Hu, PhD
Associate Professor of Biostatistics
Dr. Hu joined the Department of Biostatistics at FIU in Fall 2019. He earned his Ph.D in Biostatistics from the University of Washington, School of Public Health in 2010. He was an assistant professor in the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Utah, School of Medicine, and an investigator and biostatistician at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) from 2013 to 2019. Dr. Hu has a broad biostatistics/epidemiology background, with specific training and expertise in the areas of survival analysis, longitudinal analysis, meta-data analysis and analysis of missing data.
Area of specialty include: Survival analysis, longitudinal data analysis, meta-analysis, analysis of missing data, statistical methods in medical diagnosis and prognosis, medical research on cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, neurological disorders, and radiology.
Haiying Long, PhD
Associate Professor of Counseling; Recreation and School Psychology
Dr. Long’s research interests include methodological issues in quantitative research, survey development, and measurement, large-scale data analysis, creativity research, motivation, STEM education, and cross-cultural studies. She also has extensive evaluation experience with programs funded by Department of Education, National Science Foundation, Institute of Educational Sciences, school districts, and other non-profit and after-school organizations.
Gabriel Odom, PhD
Assistant Professor of Biostatistics
Rev. Dr. Gabriel J. Odom is an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Biostatistics at Florida International University’s Stempel College of Public Health. He is a statistician and data scientist with primary research area in software, algorithms, and methods for high-dimensional and high-throughput (-omics) data. His current research applications are in the areas of multi-omics integration, pathway clustering, and genome-wide / epigenome-wide analyses, and he publishes open-source software packages related to these applications through the Bioconductor project. Dr. Odom completed his doctoral work in statistical science at Baylor University in 2017 under Prof. Dean M. Young and Prof. Amanda S. Hering. He completed his postdoctoral training in biostatistics in the Department of Public Health Sciences, Division of Biostatistics at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine under Prof. Steven Chen and Prof. Lily Wang in 2019. He is also an ordained and active Eastern-rite (Maronite) Catholic presbyter.
Areas of Specialty include: High-Dimensional Statistics; Statistical Genetics; R/Bioconductor Package Development; Data Science; Matrix Theory; Bayesian Statistics; Spatial/Time Series.
Stefany Coxe, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychology; Center for Children and Families
Office: DM 275
Phone: 305-348-1827
Email: scoxe@fiu.edu
Areas of specialty include Quantitative methods for the social sciences and prevention science; Generalized linear model; Categorical data analysis; Statistical mediation analysis and Statistical programming
Ananda Mondal, PhD
Assistant Professor of School of Computing and Information Sciences (SCIS)
Prior to joining FIU, Dr. Mondal was an Assistant Professor (2012-2018) of Computer Science in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Claflin University, South Carolina. At Claflin University, a liberal arts and primarily undergraduate teaching institute, Dr. Mondal was a strong proponent of bringing research to undergraduate classes he taught. He developed four courses to introduce his research in Big Data and Bioinformatics to undergraduate students at Claflin University. Students mentored by Dr. Mondal graduated with refereed publications in IEEE BIBE, IEEE BIBM, and BIOCOMP. As the culmination of his career at Claflin, Dr. Mondal received the prestigious NSF CAREER Award in 2017. He was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor at Claflin University in August 2018. In Bangladesh, Dr. Mondal served as a Lecturer and then as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of South Carolina in 2011.
Areas of Specialty include: Big Data Analytics, Machine Learning with Special Interest in Deep Learning, and Bioinformatics.
Giri Narasimhan, PhD
Professor of School of Computing and Information Sciences (SCIS)
Dr. Narasimhan is an expert in the area of Algorithms, Bioinformatics, and Data Science. He recently served as the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Engineering and Computing. Dr. Narasimhan received a B.Tech. in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. In 1989 he was awarded a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. After being on the faculty in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Memphis, he joined Florida International University as an associate professor in 2001 and was promoted to full professor in 2004. Dr. Narasimhan heads the Bioinformatics Research Group (BioRG) in SCIS, and is involved in interdisciplinary research collaborating with diverse groups form different disciplines.
Areas of specialty include: Algorithms; Bioinformatics; Data Science.
Giri Narasimhan, PhD
Professor of School of Computing and Information Sciences (SCIS)
Dr. Narasimhan is an expert in the area of Algorithms, Bioinformatics, and Data Science. He recently served as the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Engineering and Computing. Dr. Narasimhan received a B.Tech. in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. In 1989 he was awarded a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. After being on the faculty in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Memphis, he joined Florida International University as an associate professor in 2001 and was promoted to full professor in 2004. Dr. Narasimhan heads the Bioinformatics Research Group (BioRG) in SCIS, and is involved in interdisciplinary research collaborating with diverse groups form different disciplines.
Areas of specialty include: Algorithms; Bioinformatics; Data Science.
Fahad Saeed, PhD
Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Information Sciences (SCIS)
Dr. Saeed is director of Saeed Lab which is a parallel computing and data science group. His research interests include parallel and distributed algorithms and architectures, computational proteomics, genomics, connectomics and big data problems in computational biology and bioinformatics.
Prior to joining FIU, Prof. Saeed was an Assistant Professor (2014-2018) in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Department of Computer Science at Western Michigan University (WMU), Kalamazoo Michigan. He was tenured and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor at WMU in July 2018. Dr. Saeed was a Post-Doctoral Fellow and then a Research Fellow in the Systems Biology Center at National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda MD from Aug 2010 to January 2014. He received his PhD in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 2010.
Areas of specialty include: Parallel algorithms, Big Data, HPC and Computational Systems Biology.
Affiliated Faculty
Tan Li, PhD
Associate Professor of Biostatistics
Dr. Tan Li received his doctoral degree in statistics in 2011 from the University of South Carolina. He joined the Department of Biostatistics at Florida International University (FIU) in 2012 and is currently an assistant professor and deputy director of the FIU-STATCONSULT Center.
Areas of speciality include: Ordinal Data Analysis; Multilevel Mixture Models; Longitudinal Data Analysis.
Boubakari Ibrahimou, PhD
Associate Professor of Biostatistics
Dr. Boubakari Ibrahimou graduated from the University of South Florida with doctoral degrees in mathematics and biostatistics. He is an assistant professor of biostatistics in the Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work and is also the deputy director of the FIU-STATCONSULT Center, where he collaborates and consults with clinicians, public health professionals, scientists, engineers and social science researchers.
Area of specialty include: Correlated Data; Nonlinear and Survival Analysis.
Changwon Yoo, PhD
Associate Professor of Biostatistics
Dr. Yoo’s research focuses on developing and disseminating innovative statistical methods for Big Data Analytics (BDA). His research draws from statistical machine learning, genomics, and neuroscience and seeks to identify and build statistical methods in big data such as genomics, proteomics, neuroimaging and clinical data.
Area of speciality includes Statistical Methods for Big Data Analytics.
Nan Hu, PhD
Associate Professor of Biostatistics
Dr. Hu joined the Department of Biostatistics at FIU in Fall 2019. He earned his Ph.D in Biostatistics from the University of Washington, School of Public Health in 2010. He was an assistant professor in the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Utah, School of Medicine, and an investigator and biostatistician at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) from 2013 to 2019. Dr. Hu has a broad biostatistics/epidemiology background, with specific training and expertise in the areas of survival analysis, longitudinal analysis, meta-data analysis and analysis of missing data.
Area of specialty include: Survival analysis, longitudinal data analysis, meta-analysis, analysis of missing data, statistical methods in medical diagnosis and prognosis, medical research on cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, neurological disorders, and radiology.
Gabriel Odom, PhD
Assistant Professor of Biostatistics
Rev. Dr. Gabriel J. Odom is an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Biostatistics at Florida International University’s Stempel College of Public Health. He is a statistician and data scientist with primary research area in software, algorithms, and methods for high-dimensional and high-throughput (-omics) data. His current research applications are in the areas of multi-omics integration, pathway clustering, and genome-wide / epigenome-wide analyses, and he publishes open-source software packages related to these applications through the Bioconductor project. Dr. Odom completed his doctoral work in statistical science at Baylor University in 2017 under Prof. Dean M. Young and Prof. Amanda S. Hering. He completed his postdoctoral training in biostatistics in the Department of Public Health Sciences, Division of Biostatistics at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine under Prof. Steven Chen and Prof. Lily Wang in 2019. He is also an ordained and active Eastern-rite (Maronite) Catholic presbyter.
Areas of Specialty include: High-Dimensional Statistics; Statistical Genetics; R/Bioconductor Package Development; Data Science; Matrix Theory; Bayesian Statistics; Spatial/Time Series.
Ananda Mondal, PhD
Assistant Professor of School of Computing and Information Sciences (SCIS)
Prior to joining FIU, Dr. Mondal was an Assistant Professor (2012-2018) of Computer Science in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Claflin University, South Carolina. At Claflin University, a liberal arts and primarily undergraduate teaching institute, Dr. Mondal was a strong proponent of bringing research to undergraduate classes he taught. He developed four courses to introduce his research in Big Data and Bioinformatics to undergraduate students at Claflin University. Students mentored by Dr. Mondal graduated with refereed publications in IEEE BIBE, IEEE BIBM, and BIOCOMP. As the culmination of his career at Claflin, Dr. Mondal received the prestigious NSF CAREER Award in 2017. He was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor at Claflin University in August 2018. In Bangladesh, Dr. Mondal served as a Lecturer and then as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of South Carolina in 2011.
Areas of Specialty include: Big Data Analytics, Machine Learning with Special Interest in Deep Learning, and Bioinformatics.
Michelle Hospital, PhD
Research Associate Professor of Biostatistics
Dr. Michelle Hospital is the Associate Director of Research and Development of FIU’s Community-Based Research Institute (CBRI). She also currently serves as a co-leader of South Florida’s first Health Disparities Research Center at a Minority Institution (RCMI) from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD).
Areas of specialty include: Structural Equation Modeling; Weighted Data; Data Analysis for Intervention Studies; Health Disparities; Youth Risk Behavior Program Evaluation.
Emir Veledar, PhD
Courtesy Professor, Department of Biostatistics
Dr. Emir Veledar is the director of predictive health analytics and outcomes at Baptist Health South Florida (BHSF) and a faculty member in the Department of Biostatistics. From 1990 to 1993, he was an assistant professor at the University of Mostar and the University of Sarajevo. In 1993, he became a visiting researcher at Tilburg University in Netherlands. From 1994 to 1998, he taught mathematics at the University of Georgia, and was appointed assistant professor of statistics at James Madison University in Virginia in 1998. In January 1999, he moved to the Cardiology Division at Emory University and, in 2013, to Baptist Health South Florida.
Areas of specialty include: Healthcare Statistics, Prediction Data Mining, Meta Analysis
Florence George, PhD
Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics
Florence George joined FIU as an Assistant Professor of Statistics in August 2007, soon after she graduated with her PhD in Statistics from University of South Florida. She did her M.S (Statistics) at Mahatma Gandhi University, M. Phil. (Statistics) at Cochin University of Science & Technology and Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Science & Applications at University of Kerala, all in India.
Areas of Specialty include: Applied Statistics, Distribution Theory and Biostatistics.
Haiying Long, PhD
Associate Professor of Counseling; Recreation and School Psychology
Dr. Long’s research interests include methodological issues in quantitative research, survey development, and measurement, large-scale data analysis, creativity research, motivation, STEM education, and cross-cultural studies. She also has extensive evaluation experience with programs funded by Department of Education, National Science Foundation, Institute of Educational Sciences, school districts, and other non-profit and after-school organizations.
Stefany Coxe, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychology; Center for Children and Families
Office: DM 275
Phone: 305-348-1827
Email: scoxe@fiu.edu
Areas of specialty include Quantitative methods for the social sciences and prevention science; Generalized linear model; Categorical data analysis; Statistical mediation analysis and Statistical programming
Giri Narasimhan, PhD
Professor of School of Computing and Information Sciences (SCIS)
Dr. Narasimhan is an expert in the area of Algorithms, Bioinformatics, and Data Science. He recently served as the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Engineering and Computing. Dr. Narasimhan received a B.Tech. in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. In 1989 he was awarded a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. After being on the faculty in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Memphis, he joined Florida International University as an associate professor in 2001 and was promoted to full professor in 2004. Dr. Narasimhan heads the Bioinformatics Research Group (BioRG) in SCIS, and is involved in interdisciplinary research collaborating with diverse groups form different disciplines.
Areas of specialty include: Algorithms; Bioinformatics; Data Science.
Fahad Saeed, PhD
Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Information Sciences (SCIS)
Dr. Saeed is director of Saeed Lab which is a parallel computing and data science group. His research interests include parallel and distributed algorithms and architectures, computational proteomics, genomics, connectomics and big data problems in computational biology and bioinformatics.
Prior to joining FIU, Prof. Saeed was an Assistant Professor (2014-2018) in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Department of Computer Science at Western Michigan University (WMU), Kalamazoo Michigan. He was tenured and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor at WMU in July 2018. Dr. Saeed was a Post-Doctoral Fellow and then a Research Fellow in the Systems Biology Center at National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda MD from Aug 2010 to January 2014. He received his PhD in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 2010.
Areas of specialty include: Parallel algorithms, Big Data, HPC and Computational Systems Biology.
Affiliated Staff
Zhenghua Gong, MS
Data Analyst II
Zhenghua Gong is a interdisciplinary expert. She has Master degrees from Department of Statistics, FIU, School of Computing and Information Science, FIU and Master degree in Engineering in China. She currently is a Data analyst in the Department of Biostatistics at Florida International University’s Stempel College of Public Health.
She is statistician and data scientist. Her research interests include applying statistical, data mining, machine learning algorithms and models in the area of public health, environment, social work etc; data ETL, analysis, prediction and visualization; algorithms and models improvement by R, Python, etc.
Prasad Bhoite, MPH, MBA (Healthcare Administration)
Data Scientist
Prasad Bhoite is a Data Scientist with the Department of Humanities, Health, and Society in Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, Florida International University (FIU). He has completed his MPH from Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work, FIU and MBA (Healthcare Administration) from India.
Prasad enjoys displaying the value of analytics using tools such as Python, R, SQL, ArcGIS, Microsoft PowerBI, Atlas,ti. He has expertise in Data Management, Machine Learning, Business Intelligence, Statistical and Predictive analytics.