BAC LEADERSHIP TEAM
Michael Kallan, MS
MS (Biostatistics), University of Michigan, 1998
Mr. Kallan came to Penn upon receiving his Master’s degree in 1998, and has been BAC Budget
Manager since 2006 and BAC Co-Director since 2019. During his time at Penn, Michael has worked
on various collaborative projects, including (but not limited to those) in the fields of child passenger
safety, geriatric psychiatry, rheumatoid arthritis, obesity, lymphedema, pneumonia, sepsis and liver
disease. He has been a co-author on over 100 papers in the peer-reviewed literature.
Scott Appel, MS
MS (Biostatistics), University of Michigan, 1997
Mr. Appel joined the BAC in 2016, bringing with him twenty years of experience as a consultant, statistician, and manager. He was promoted to BAC Co-Director in 2019. In his leadership role, Scott is responsible for meeting with new clients and working with Michael Kallan to determine project scopes, costs, and timelines. His ongoing project responsibilities include work for the American Heart Association, and the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Prior to his time at Penn, Scott spent the previous ten years modeling consumer choices at Neilsen, during which he oversaw two statistical teams.
Warren Bilker, PhD
Ph.D. (Biostatistics), Johns Hopkins University, 1992; M.S. (Statistics), Temple University, 1984; B.A. (Mathematics), Temple University, 1981.
Dr. Bilker's methodological research focuses on pharmacoepidemiology, survival analysis, psychiatric methods and correlated data. His primary applied research interests are in schizophrenia and in the analysis of pharmacoepidemiology data using large databases. He is the principal investigator of the biostatistics and data core of the Schizophrenia Center in the Department of Psychiatry, which emphasizes the study of the relationship between brain imaging findings and the clinical course of schizophrenia.
John Farrar, MD, PhD
Ph.D. (Graduate Group - Biostatistics and Epidemiology), University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, 2004; M.S.C.E. (Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics), University of Pennsylvania, 2000. M.D., The University of Rochester School of Medicine, 1981. ScB. (Biology, Computer Science minor), Brown University, 1976.
Dr. Farrar has been involved in clinical research for more than 20 years, with a major focus on the study of the efficacy of pain therapeutics and on novel methodology in the design and execution of clinical trials. As a neurologist and a pharmaco-epidemiologist, he has been involved in numerous studies including randomized trials (RCTs), cohort studies, and methodologic studies of pain and associated symptoms such as fatigue, depression, and quality of life in clinical research and practice, which have been conducted with funding he has received from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), private foundations, and industry sources. Currently he is the principal investigator of the Center of Excellence for Pain Education, he directs the evaluation component of Penn's current Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), and he is a collaborator with the data coordinating center for the U54 multicenter Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Chronic Pelvic Pain (MAPP) study. Nationally he has served on advisory boards for the FDA, on the National Academy of Science (NAS) committee on Missing Data in Clinical Trials, and on the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) committee on Relieving Pain in America. He continues to serve roles as an ad hoc reviewer for NIH and the FDA, and as associate editor for the journal of Pharmaco-epidemiology and Drug Safety (PDS).
His current research is focused on the evaluation of new methodologies for understanding how patients report their pain, studies in a large population of patients with pelvic pain, and functional brain imaging in people with pain. At the University of Pennsylvania, he also serves as the co-director of the Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology program and of the Biostatistics and Epidemiology Consulting Center. He directs the Introduction to Epidemiology course for medical students. In addition, he continues to see patients, predominately in a palliative care setting.
BAC BIOSTATISTICIANS
Colleen Brensinger, MS
MS (Statistics), Ohio State University, 1997
Ms. Brensinger joined the Biostatistics Unit within the CCEB upon receiving her degree in July of 1997. She has over 20 years of experience working with large databases including CMS Medicaid and Medicare data, Optum Clinformatics Data Mart, and SEER-Medicare linked data. Ms. Brensinger currently works on collaborative projects involving drug-drug interactions, defining the incidence, prevalence, and treatment patterns of IBD in the United States, identifying risk factors for stimulant overdose in the Medicaid population, and surveillance patterns in women with uterine, cervical, and ovarian cancer.
Xiaoyan (Sherry) Han, MS
MS (Statistics), University of Cincinnati, 2002
Ms. Han joined the Biostatistics Unit in January 2005 after serving two years as a Biostatistician at the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion at the VA in Pittsburgh, PA. Ms. Han currently works on collaborative projects involving The sustained aeration of infant lungs study(SAIL), the risk factors for prolonged CO-MRSA colonization in subjects with a CO-MRSA SSTI study, University of Pennsylvania Prevention Epicenter project, Pharmacogenetics and HIV treatment outcomes study, Studies in Neonatal Resuscitation, Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center study, Frontotemporal Dementia study and DM & Biocore for Parkinson’s center projects and some short consulting projects.
Jonathan Heintz, MS
M.S. (Applied Statistics), West Chester University of Pennsylvania, 2017
After teaching mathematics for 8 years, Jonathan Heintz joined the Biostatistics Analysis Center in July 2021. Since joining the team, he has provided analysis for various project types, which recently includes categorical analysis, cost analysis, general estimating equations, generalized linear models, survival analysis, and many more. Jon has also consulted on several sample size and power calculations for project, grant, and clinical trial proposals. As a lifelong learner, Jon graduated in 2017 from West Chester University of Pennsylvania with a Master’s in Applied Statistics, and he is a current student in the Engineering in Data Science Master’s program at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ashika Mani, MS
Master in Biostatistics, University of Pittsburgh, 2021
Ms. Mani joined the BAC in August 2023, bringing to the team more than 5 years of experience in data analysis and statistics. Ashika has experience dealing with large datasets and coding in a variety of languages including R, SAS, and Python.
Tara McWilliams, MS
MS (Biostatistics), Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health, 2020; BS (Mathematics), Rutgers University, 2018
Ms. McWilliams joined the BAC as a statistical analyst upon receiving her master’s degree in 2020. She currently works on a range of collaborative projects examining environmental and socioeconomic predictors of lung cancer, the epiproteomic landscape and histone code of cutaneous t-cell lymphoma, and a meta-analysis of dozens of FDA clinical trials examining the efficacy of over-the-counter pain medications and opioids for both acute and chronic pain. She also often provides analytic support for shorter term consulting projects, and her preferred programming languages are R and SAS.
Craig Newcomb, MS
M.S. (Applied Statistics) West Chester University 2006; BA (Mathematics) West Chester University 2004; BS (Business Economics), Grove City College 1999
Mr. Newcomb joined the BAC in 2004 as a SAS programmer. In 2006 he started working as a biostatistician. He has extensive work with analyses using large databases such as CMS Medicaid and Medicare data, VA data, and Optum Clinformatics Data Mart. He currently works on collaborative projects involving pelvic pain, HBV, liver disease, and various eye diseases.
Ann Tierney, MS
Ann Tierney (M.S. (Applied Statistics) West Chester University 2008
Ann joined the BAC as a statistician and manager in 2010. She primarily supports clinical trials by providing progress and safety reports and analytic support. Studies include REGAIN, a randomized trial of anesthesia type on hip fracture patients and the ACNE Trial, a randomized trial of two acne treatments.
Xingmei Wang, MS
MS (Biostatistics), University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), 2004
Ms. Wang joined the Biostatistics Analysis Center as a Staff Biostatistician in August 2004. She has experience on both experimental and observational studies. She currently works on multiple transplant studies using UNOS (United Network for Organ Sharing) database, and she also provides statistical support for multiple radiation oncology studies. In addition, she provides consulting services for short term projects on study design, protocol statistical section review, and write up / review statistical section in manuscript.
Qufei Wu, MS
MS (Computer Engineering), University of Maryland, 2007
MS (Applied Statistics West Chester University, 2019
Mr. Wu joined the BAC in October 2008. Prior to this, he worked at NIH for bioinformatics research projects during graduate school. He had experiences working with large databases including CMS Medicaid and Medicare data, Optum, the EPIC Clarity database, the IQVIA Medical Research Data (IMRD) formerly known as THIN, VA hospital data. He currently works on various collaborative projects involving patients with Kidney stone, Ulcerative colitis, Autoimmune Hepatitis, Risk of Infectious Complications in Glomerular. He also works for other projects including trauma patients and lung transplant outcome.
Siqi Zhang, MS
Master of Biostatistics, Duke University School of Medicine, 2020
Ms. Zhang joined the BAC group in April 2021. She has over 5-year educational background in statistics and data analysis. Since she joined the group, she has worked on various projects such as performing mixed effect models on Ostomy patients among various cancer types, analyzing survival outcomes for HIV-related patients and metastatic lung cancer patients. She also has experiences on clinical trials, Quality of Life (QOL) and toxicity related projects.
BAC PROGRAMMERS
Min Du, MS
MS (Computer Engineering), New Jersey Institute of Technology, 2000; BS (Science in Physics), Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, 1998; SAS Certificates 2012
Ms. Du joined the BAC as a SAS Programmer Analyst in April 2013. She Provides programming support for epidemiological studies, clinical trials, genomics research, and large database studies. She is working on collaborative projects including, DDI, DDID, PMHARC, DDIP,DDIMB. Prior to working at Penn, Ms. Du worked for Nokia Siemens Network (NSN) for eight years as a system test engineer.
Qing (Jean) Liu
B.S.(Medicine) Hunan Medical University, Changsha, China, 1987; SAS Certificate 2001; Medicare Data for Research CMS Certificate, 2005.
Ms. Liu joined the BAC as a SAS Programmer Analyst in July 2001. She Provides programming support for epidemiological studies, clinical trials, genomics research, with a focus on studies with large databases such as CMS Medicaid and Medicare data, VA data, , CCW and Optum Clinformatics Data Mart. Prior to working at Penn, Ms. Liu worked for Gen Trak, Inc. as a Manufacturing Technologists Prior to that, she worked as a Research Associate for UCLA School of Medicine involved in DNA and RNA extractions, sequence analysis, gene mapping techniques and data analysis.