The Center for Computational Molecular Biology recently hired Ying Ma as an incoming Assistant Professor of Biostatistics. She officially joined Brown on August 1, 2023 and will be spending a year at the School of Public Health before teaching within CCMB. Dr. Ma recently obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in June 2023, and has been working on developing statistical and computational methods for genomics and genomic data, with a specific focus on single-cell RNA sequencing and spatially resolved transcriptomics.

In particular, her work centers on these areas

1. Powerful integrative statistical tests of association between gene sets and a phenotype
2. Scalable Bayesian models and computational tools for high-throughput genomics data
3. Effective and efficient optimization algorithms for multi-omics integrative analysis
4. Genetic risk prediction analysis in large-scale bio-banks.

Dr. Ma's motivation to develop tailored statistical models to advance the understanding of high-dimensional genomic data will add to the Center's growth under the new Institute.