UW Department of Biostatistics

Congrats Katherine Hoffman! It has been such a delight to have such a talented biostatistics doctoral student in our lab. This is an incredible accomplishment - first author Nature Comms paper - and fills an important gap in pediatric research on SARS-CoV-2. This population is challenging to study, and this paper provides important data particularly around asymptomatic infection, and serologic correlates of protection in thousands of young children in the United States. University of Washington School of Public Health UW Department of Biostatistics

Excited to finally see this research published! Our study adds much-needed pediatric, hybrid immunity data to the growing literature on SARS-CoV-2 correlates of risk and protection. Across a range of age groups and immunity profiles, we found that both neutralizing and binding SARS-CoV-2 antibodies were inversely associated with risk of subsequent infection in children. Unlike many correlates studies that focus only on symptomatic infections, our prospective cohort study used serial testing, with participants testing weekly regardless of symptoms (and more frequently if symptoms developed). This design allowed us to examine the relationship between antibody levels and infection risk independent of symptom status. This was the first project I worked on after starting my PhD in the UW Department of Biostatistics and I learned an incredible amount. I'm grateful for the opportunity to do so much applied infectious disease research with Dr. Helen Chu and her lab, and alongside my advisor Dr. Marco Carone, in addition to my dissertation research in biostatistical methods. https://lnkd.in/ggvaDEY2

Congratulations to Fred Hutch researchers Drs. Steve Hahn, Ruth Etzioni and Ulrike Peters on their election to the Washington State Academy of Sciences! Hahn, a professor in Fred Hutch’s Basic Sciences Division, was recognized for discoveries that have helped scientists better understand how genes are turned on and off in our cells. His research has advanced our understanding of biology and paved the way for new scientific breakthroughs. Etzioni, a professor in Fred Hutch’s Public Health Sciences Division, was honored for developing innovative tools that help researchers and policymakers improve cancer screening and early detection. Her work has influenced cancer screening guidelines and helped improve public health around the world. Peters, associate director of Fred Hutch’s Public Health Sciences Division, was recognized for research that combines genetic, environmental and health data to better prevent colorectal cancer and reduce health disparities. Her leadership continues to advance precision prevention and population health research. They join 30 other scientists from across Washington recognized for outstanding scientific achievement and a commitment to bringing trusted science to important public policy decisions.

It was a fun day in the sun at Magnuson Park last week for the Biostat department picnic!

Check out our department's 2026 line-up of presenters for this year's Joint Statistical Meetings in Boston.⁠ And a reminder to join us August 3 from 5-7 p.m. for our annual joint alumni reception at JSM! The event is free to alumni, students, and faculty of UW Biostatistics and Statistics departments. RSVP today to let us know if you plan to attend!⁠ ⁠ https://lnkd.in/gMXBGbgy

Genetic screening for common hereditary conditions may be coming to a primary care facility near you. The UW Genetics Analysis Center and other University of Washington School of Public Health researchers are part of a pilot project scaling up genomic screening in primary care settings for common, actionable conditions like hereditary breast and ovarian cancer where early detection can really help improve health outcomes. https://bit.ly/3TyNtYE

For the past two weeks, our independent team of statisticians, AI evaluation experts, clinical AI researchers, and clinicians was given a unique opportunity to test one question: “How well do different AI tools answer user questions on the OpenEvidence (OE) platform?” We were given access to 620 benchmark questions sampled from real queries submitted to OE, and 149 practicing physicians across 36 states made blinded head-to-head comparisons between answers from three frontier general-purpose models (Claude Opus 4.8, Gemini 3.1 Pro, and GPT5.5) and OE’s specialized clinical AI tool. Graders were matched to questions that matched their specialty to maximize evaluation accuracy. Today we are sharing the results on arXiv and the benchmark dataset on HuggingFace. Following our prespecified statistical analysis, OE scored highest on all five dimensions of accuracy, clinical utility, source quality, verifiability, and completeness. On the primary endpoint of win differences (a model’s win rate minus its loss rate in head-to-head comparisons), OE led by 25–39 percentage points all these dimensions (p < 0.001). Results were consistent across our *many* sensitivity analyses. So, how do these results square with recent work reporting general-purpose LLMs outperform OE? We think both findings can be true: when a specialized tool is evaluated in a setting outside of its intended workflow, it may underperform. But the more relevant question for AI application developers is whether their tool is delivering value in its intended use case for its target users. On that measure, our findings are positive. At least for now, the hard work of engineering and customizing an AI system can still pay off, delivering meaningful performance gains to its target users. Please see the paper for important details and nuances of the work. Our hope is that this starts a healthy discussion on how to best evaluate AI systems, because no evaluation is perfect and every evaluation involves tradeoffs. 📎 : https://lnkd.in/eJj9sVpZ 🤗 : https://lnkd.in/ewBxmbnT 💻: https://lnkd.in/e_Mv4F_x The incredible team behind this work: Vishal Patel, Patrick Heagerty, Yifan Mai, Venkatesh S., Patrick Vossler, Jialin Ouyang, Bapu Jena

Congratulations to Biostats Assistant Professor Yiqun T. Chen who recently received a Faculty Innovation Fund award! 👏👏 The Innovation Fund awards program supports early-stage investigators in piloting innovative methods or generating preliminary data for future grant applications. Yiqun was the recipient of The Richard L. Gelb Cancer Prevention Fund for "Efficient Inference and Optimal Design for AI-Powered Public Health Measurement." Learn more about the awards, and other winners, online: https://lnkd.in/ekrqNeWD

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Roundup manufacturer Bayer did not need to warn consumers about potential cancer risk associated with the weed killer, whose main ingredient is the probable carcinogen glyphosate. In an interview with NBC News, DEOHS Professor Lianne Sheppard noted that that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015. “IARC got it right, and the evidence since the IARC review that happened in 2015 has only gotten stronger," she said. https://lnkd.in/emPM4Wgf

Very proud to celebrate the graduation of two of my amazing students, Albert Osom and Gabriela Vasconcelos. I will miss Gabby and Albert, but excited to see them flourish in the next chapter of their careers.