University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: September 11, 2003

By DONNA LONGENECKER
Reporter Assistant Editor

The history of statistics as a department at UB has been a bumpy one.

Once a freestanding department within the former Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, the department was moved into the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in 1998. It was folded into the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine in the medical school as a biostatistics division in 1998, then moved within the School of Public Health and Health Professions in 2002.

HUTSON

This past June, statistics came full circle, regaining full departmental status within the School of Public Health and Health Professions—complete with a growing list of world-class faculty, a consulting laboratory and plans to offer master's and doctoral degrees by next fall.

Since Alan Hutson was named chief of the then-Division of Biostatistics in June 2002, the unit has added three additional faculty members to a staff of five tenure-track faculty and eight research-track faculty that brings a variety of research capabilities in clinical trials design, statistical genetics, pattern recognition, measurement error and epidemiological statistical analysis methods to an already active research and teaching program. In just the past year alone, the Department of Biostatistics participated in more than 40 collaborative grant applications on topics ranging from improving the diagnosis of metabolic diseases to vaccine trials to the treatment of injuries of collegiate athletes.

Hutson, who received bachelor's and master's degrees in statistics from UB, was on campus during the department's move to the medical school during the late 1980s. But during the 1970s, he asserts, the department easily was one of the top five statistics departments in the world.

"The history of statistics is rich here. I'm happy to be back," says Hutson, a native Central New Yorker who received another master's degree and doctorate in statistics from the University of Rochester. "I actually lived through the turmoil—the history of when statistics actually switched from arts and sciences to medicine. They weren't even going to grandfather us in—they were going to just say, 'it's over' at one point. Can you imagine being in the middle of your master's program? I actually lived through that," he says.

And things have been a bit rocky this time around too. "We've had to fight, scratch and claw to get what we need. Without (Provost) Betty Capaldi and Maurizio Trevisan (interim dean of the School of Public Health and Health Professions), there wouldn't be a Department of Biostatistics."

Immediately after Hutson was hired, a schoolwide hiring freeze went into effect. Although the department received a New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research (NYSTAR) grant to hire new faculty and purchase equipment, the money wasn't immediately available, and Hutson again credits Capaldi with making excellent faculty hires possible, even before the NYSTAR funds arrived.

The department also works closely with scientists at Roswell Park Cancer Institute on a variety of projects, including microarray data analysis. Hutson says the department is a behind-the-scenes player, or as he puts it, "we are model builders who design and analyze scientific experiments and interpret data on most of the hot research topics, such as biosurveillance and handwriting recognition."

Hutson believes it's his job to make the department as indispensable as possible, but that seems a given—biostatistics plays an important role providing courses for the master's in public health degree and faculty members teach as many as 300-400 undergraduates a year who are enrolled in statistics service courses.

And since the consulting lab reopened last year, more than 30 departments have utilized its services, which includes a one hour free statistical consultation on small-to-moderate-size d projects to all UB faculty, staff and students on a first-come, first-served basis.

"We're here—utilize us. We're able to offer a level of expertise that was never here before," says Hutson, who also is working to establish strong ties with the New York State Department of Public Health, which in the past has engaged biostatistics departments outside the state to carry out grant-related projects.

A major goal of the department, according to Hutson, is to produce well-trained students to meet the increasing demand for biostatisticians in academe, government and industry, and to promote and extend the proper use of statistics in the health sciences. The presence of the department dramatically enhances the ability of UB to compete for local, state and federal grants, Hutson explains. The only other pure biostatistics department within a school of public health in New York is at Columbia University, yet 85 percent of AAU colleges and universities have a statistics or biostatistics department or degree program, he adds.

The computing power offered by the department also is substantial, Hutson points out, with a lab open to graduate students 24 hours a day and many of the software packages crucial to statisticians available on a high capacity Sun server.