News 2024

News 2023

News 2022

News 2021

News 2020

  • As member of ENAR Regional Advisory Board Linda co-organizes the first ENAR DataFest! Please, consider the session where the winners will be presenting the results of their work at ENAR 2024.

  • Doctoral candidates Charlotte Fowler and Melanie Mayer attend and present their research in collaboration with the lab at the 2024 edition of ENAR in Baltimore.

  • Doctoral student Fanyu Cui joins the lab! Welcome Fanyu!!

  • Doctoral candidates Charly and Melanie with former post-doctoral fellow Xiaoxuan attend and present their research in collaboration with the lab at the 2023 edition of JSM in Toronto.

  • Arce Domingo-Relloso joins our lab in May 2023 as post-doctoral fellow from Spain!! She is an expert in biostatistical methods for environmental mixtures. She will work in our lab in collaboration with Jeff Goldsmith, Ana Navas-Acien, and the team of the Columbia Superfund Research Program to develop machine learning approaches for mediation analysis. We are thrilled to elucidate the role of cardiovascular disease onset and trajectory as mechanism linking air pollutants and metals to dementia. Stay tuned!

  • Junzhe joins Berkeley Biostatistics in the Fall 2023…amazing news! sad to see you leave but super proud of you!

  • Doctoral candidates Charly Fowler, Melanie Mayer and master student Junzhe Shao attend and present their research at the 2023 edition of the American Causal Inference Conference in Austin, TX. So excited for them!!

  • Zilan successfully defends her dissertation on May 4th 2023…We are so proud of you Dr. Chai!! It was an amazing journey learning together about causal inference for environmental mixture studies and addressing key challenges of complex measured and unmeasured confounding and developing practical tools for environmental research!

  • Linda receives her first R01 award from the National Institute of Aging in Spring 2023! We will study the mechanisms linking metal and air pollution mixtures and dementia under a multivariate disease process perspective. Developing Bayesian machine learning models we seek to improve robustness and generalizability of findings across populations.

  • We welcome Kateline Le Bourdonnec as visiting student for the Fall 2022! Kateline is working with Prof. Cécile Proust-Lima at the University of Bordeaux and is joining us to collaborate on the development of causal mediation analyses approaches for dementia research. Welcome Kateline!

  • Junzhe’s paper “Generalized synthetic control method via state-space models” has been accepted by NeurIPS 2022 Workshop on CML4Impact.

  • So many of us at JSM 2022! Charlotte, Melanie, Zilan, and Xiaoxuan present their work at the intersection of mHealth, environmental health, and causal inference at the conference this year.

  • Linda receives the Sanford Bolton Award from the Department of Biostatistics in the summer of 2022. “The Sanford Bolton Faculty Scholars program supports for two years distinguished assistant professors to catalyze innovative methodological research in biostatistics and to enhance translational impact.”

  • Charlotte Fowler and Melanie Mayer, doctoral candidates in Biostatistics, successfully passes their Oral qualifying examinations in the summer of 2022!! Congratulations!!!

  • Linda is invited to join the ENAR regional committee. Looking forward to contribute to foster the growth of our profession!

  • Linda becomes MOM for the first time..Francesco Maria came to the world! Biggest accomplishment and news of 2022 :)

  • Xiaoxuan Cai, post-doctoral fellow in the Valeri lab, has accepted an Assistant Professor position in Statistics at Ohio State University with starting date in August 2022. Congratulations Xiaoxuan!!! Looking forward to continue our collaboration and to see your lab growing.

  • Linda receives the NIH Mobile Health (mHealth) Training Institute (mHTI) Scholar Award and joins a diverse group of scholars in an intensive training on mHealth research during the summer of 2021.

  • Our paper “State space model multiple imputation for missing data in non-stationary multivariate time series” has been accepted by NeurIPS 2021 Workshop on Causal Inference Challenges in Sequential Decision Making: Bridging Theory and Practice.

  • Charlotte Fowler, is now officially doctoral candidate in Biostatistics! She successfully passes her Written qualifying examinations in August 2021, Congratulations Charly!!

  • Our paper “Effectiveness of a video-based intervention on reducing perceptions of fear, loneliness, and public stigma related to COVID-19: a Randomized Controlled Trial“ is forthcoming in the special issue “A Public Health View on COVID-19: Epidemiology, Implications and Responses” of the International Journal of Public Health where we present an effective digital intervention to reduce COVID-19 related public stigma.

  • Zilan Chai, doctoral candidate in Biostatistics, successfully passes her Oral qualifying examinations in July 2021!! Brava Zilan!! We are very proud of you.

  • Doctoral candidate Melanie Mayer receives the 2021 TL1 fellowship that allows doctoral students to gain knowledge and skill-sets that may be outside of their primary academic discipline during their dissertation work. Congratulations Melanie!! We are lucky to have you in the lab!

  • Melanie Mayer’s abstract to the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology 2021 conference entitled “Machine Learning Approaches for Environmental Mixtures Studies with Time-to-Event Outcomes and their Application to the Strong Heart Study“ has been accepted. Congratulations, Melanie!

  • Xiaoxuan Cai, post-doctoral fellow in the lab presents her work on “A state-space imputation approach for non-stationary multivariate time series“ addressing the critical challenge of missing data in mHealth studies for causal inference in Psychiatry. She presents at JSM 2021 and alongside Mark van der Laan and Walter Dempsey at the invited causal inference session of the 2021 International Society of Clinical Biostatistics conference.

  • Aijin’s abstract to the Society for Biological Psychiatry 2021 conference entitled “Smartphone-based markers of social activity in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder“ has been accepted. Congratulations, Aijin!

  • Zixu’s abstract to the Society for Biological Psychiatry 2021 conference entitled “Loneliness in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Patients: a Multi-Year mHealth Study“ has been accepted. Congratulations, Zixu!

  • We have completed the R package CMAverse for reproducible mediation analysis (see the tutorial here, we welcome your feedback!)… shout out to Baoyi for her dedication to this project!!

  • Xiaoxuan Cai, recent graduate of Yale Biostatistics joins the lab in August 2020 as post-doctoral fellow. Welcome Xiaoxuan!

  • Weijia Fan, currently Data Analyst in the lab, joins the Dr.PH program in Biostatistics at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health in the Fall 2020. Congratulations!!

  • Baoyi Shi joins the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health PhD program in Biostatistics in the Fall 2020. Congratulations!!

  • Baoyi Shi receives the Columbia Biostatistics Award for best master student practicum poster. Congratulations, Baoyi!

  • Linda joins the effort as primary statistician for the HEROES cohort. This is global cohort established by our own doctoral students in Epidemiology at Columbia University investigates the consequences of COVID-19 on healthcare workers’ mental health in developing and developed countries. Kudos to team for the tremendous effort to establish it! More information can be found at the clinicaltrial.gov page. Looking forward to seeing the results!

  • Yiwen’s abstract to the Society of Epidemiology Research 2020 conference entitled “Meta-analysis of the total effect decomposition in the presence of multiple mediators: Integrating evidence across trials for schizophrenia treatment“ has been accepted. Congratulations, Yiwen!

  • Aijin’s abstract to the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology 2020 conference entitled “BKMR-CMA a novel r command for causal mediation analysis for environmental mixture studies“ has been accepted. Congratulations, Aijin!

Funding

  • 2023-2028: R01 grant - National Institute of Aging “BAYESIAN STATISTICAL LEARNING FOR ROBUST AND GENERALIZABLE CAUSAL INFERENCES IN ADRD“.

  • 2022-2024 Sanford Bolton Award. “The Sanford Bolton Faculty Scholars program supports distinguished assistant professors to catalyze innovative methodological research in biostatistics and to enhance translational impact. The recipient is granted a generous funding package reflecting protected time to foster career development, spur research innovation, and accelerate the path towards an extramurally funded research program.” 

  • 2021 Linda receives the NIH Mobile Health (mHealth) Training Institute (mHTI) Scholar Award.

  • 2020 Mailman School of Public Health Innovation Fund: with Caleb Miles and Kara Rudolph we plan to build “A New York Causality Network“.

  • 2020 Mailman School of Public Health Innovation Fund will partly fund Valeri Lab and a team of psychiatrists at the New York State Psychiatric Institute to test ethics and feasibility of mobile applications for the assessment of social functioning in schizophrenia among low income and minority patient populations.

Talks and Short Courses

  • During Summer 2024 Linda gives short courses on Causal Mediation Analysis at Columbia University, University of Michigan, and the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. If you are interested, you can find more information in the Teaching section.

  • In the Spring of 2024 Linda gives a seminar on “Missing Data and Personalized Causal Inference in Mobile Health Studies of Bipolar Patients“ at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL and joins an invited session on methodology for health disparity research presenting on “A multistate approach for mediation analysis in the presence of competing risks with application in cancer survival disparities.” at the Eastern North American Region of the Biometric Society, Baltimore, MD.

  • Linda has organized the invited session at the 2023 CMstatistics conference, on Causal inference methods for missing data and unmeasured confounding in mobile health studies.

  • During Winter 2023 Linda gives a short course on Causal Mediation Analysis at the University of Milan

  • In the Fall 2023 Linda presents on “Smartphone-sensing of social behavior of bipolar and schizophrenia patients” at the Department of Computational Psychiatry of New York University

  • During Summer 2023 Linda gives short courses on Causal Mediation Analysis at Columbia University, University of Michigan, and the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. If you are interested, you can find more information in the Teaching section.

  • Linda teaches a workshop on “Machine Learning approaches for Environmental Mixtures“ at the annual Experience sharing and Training Workshop of the APHREA-DST initiative taking place in Addis Ababa May 2023.

  • Linda is teaching at the 2023 Spring School on Causality at the Sorbonne University.

  • Linda and Xiaoxuan have organized the invited session at the 2022 CMstatistics conference at King’s College, London on New Statistical Advances in the Analysis of Wearable Device Data. Consider attending this amazing conference!

  • In the Fall 2022, Linda gives seminars at the Second Penn Conference on Big Data in Biomedical and Population Health Sciences, at the Department of Biostatistics of the University of Washington and at the Department of Statistics and Biostatistics at Boston University.

  • During Summer 2022 Linda gives short courses on Causal Mediation Analysis at Columbia University, University of Michigan, the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam and the University of Milan. If you are interested, you can find more information in the Teaching section.

  • At ISCB 2022 Linda presents at the invited session “Semi-competing risks and causal inference”.

  • At ENAR 2022 Linda presents at the invited session “Environmental Health Meets Causal Inference“ her latest works on machine learning methods for time-dependent confounding and transportability in environmental mixture studies.

  • In the Spring 2022, Linda presents her latest works at the intersection of mHealth, causal inference and Psychiatry at the Department of Biostatistics of the University of Washington and Boston University, at McLean Hospital and NYU PRIISM center.

  • In the Fall 2021, Linda gives seminars at the Department of Biostatistics of the University of Michigan and at the Department of Statistics at Columbia University.

  • In the Fall 2021, Linda presents her latest works at the intersection of mHealth, causal inference and Psychiatry. She presents on “Smartphone-sensing of social behavior of bipolar and schizophrenia patients” at the 3rd Health Data Science Symposium at Harvard University and at the Social Network in Medicine Symposium. At the 14th CMstatistics at King’s College, London, she presents on “Missing data imputation via state space model for non-stationary multivariate time series in mHealth”.

  • Linda presents on causal mediation analysis methods at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana in August 2021!

  • The first Environmental Justice Bootcamp at Columbia University is launching in the summer 2021 and Linda presents on causal mediation analysis methods for health disparities research.

  • At the 2021 Melodem meeting, Linda gives a talk on causal mediation analysis methods in the presence of semi-competing risks.

  • Linda presents at the Society for Biological Psychiatry 2021 on mediation analysis to evaluate the effect of COVID-19 emergency declaration on loneliness of schizophrenia and bipolar patients in a N-of-1 smartphone study.

  • At JSM 2021, Linda is the discussant for the invited session “Novel interventional approaches to causal mediation analysis: Theory and Practice“.

  • In the Spring 2021, Linda gives seminars at the Department of Statistics of the University of Haifa, at the Centre for Outcomes Research, McGill University Health Centre – Research Institute and at the Penn Center for Causal Inference.

  • At ENAR 2021, Linda organizes and leads a roundtable discussion on “Causal inference for health disparities research”.

  • Linda has organized the invited causal inference session at the 2021 Conference of the International Society of Clinical Biostatistics. The topic of the session is Causal inference for mobile health. Consider attending this amazing conference!

  • Linda presents at the 2020 JSM conference session on Novel Perspectives on the Estimation of Longitudinal Effects her recent work in causal mediation analysis when the mediator and outcome are time to events. “Mediation Analysis When Outcome and Mediator Are Semi-Competing Events with Application in Health Disparities Research”.