Co-Directors
Xihong Lin
Xihong Lin, PhD, is Professor of Biostatistics and former Chair of the Department of Biostatistics, Professor of Statistics, and Associate member of the Broad Institute. She is also the Coordinating Director of the SPH Program on Quantitative Genomics (PQG). She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Her research interests lie in development and application of statistical and computational methods for analysis of high-throughput genetic and genomic data in epidemiological, environmental and clinical studies, for analysis of complex exposure and phenotype data in observational studies, and statistical learning and inference methods for massive data .Her statistical methodological research is supported by an NCI MERIT Award (R37, 2007-2015) and an NCI Outstanding Investigator Award (R35, 2015-2022) entitled “Statistical Methods for Analysis of Massive Genetic and Genomic Data”. She is the contact PI of the U01 grant of the Harvard Analysis Center of the NHGRI Genome Sequencing Program, and the multiple PI of the NCI U19 grant on “Integrative Analysis of Lung Cancer Etiology and Risk.”
Dr. Lin is a leading expert in statistical genetics and genomics and statistical methods for large scale genetic epidemiological and clinical data. Her research interests lie in the development and application of statistical and computational methods for analysis of high-throughput genetic and genomic data from studies in genetic and epigenetic epidemiology, environmental genomics, and medical genomics, complex observational studies, and statistical learning. She is a leading expert on genome-wide association studies, rare variant analysis of whole genome sequencing association studies, gene-environment interactions, and genome-wide DNA methylation studies, pathway and network analysis, and integrative genetics and genomics. She is also well known for her work in nonparametric and semiparametric regression methods, and longitudinal data analysis such as mixed models. Dr. Lin has collaborated extensively with molecular and genetic epidemiologists, environmental health scientists at Harvard, nationally and internationally. Contact PD/PI: LIN, XIHONG Multiple PD/PI Leadership Plan Page 80
Dr. Lin has a strong training record. She has trained 29 doctoral students as the primary dissertation advisor and 14 postdocs. She is currently supervising four PhD students and seven postdoctoral fellows. Over 85% (37/43) of her former PhD students and postdocs have taken academic faculty positions in leading biostatistics departments, such as Harvard University, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and MD Anderson Cancer Center. She has served on over 75 PhD dissertation committees, with students ranging from biostatistics, epidemiology, environmental health, to health policy and management. She is currently serving on two dissertation committees as a member.
Dr. Lin also founded in 2001 a successful and influential bi-annual mentoring workshop at the ENAR annual meeting (the primary biostatistical conference in North-America). Over 400 junior biostatistical faculty members from a large number of institutions across the US have graduated from this mentoring workshop in the last 17 years, and many have joined the new generation of leaders in the biostatistical community.
Dr. Lin has held high-level executive positions in several leading statistical societies, including serving between 2009 and 2012 as the Chair of the Committee of the Presidents of the Statistical Societies (COPSS). She was the former Coordinating Editor of Biometrics, and the former co-editor of Statistics in Biosciences. She has been the associate editor of many statistical and genetic journals. She is a member of the Committee of Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Science.
Curtis Huttenhower
Curtis Huttenhower, PhD, is Professor of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics in the Department of Biostatistics, as well as an Associate Member of the Broad Institute. He is the Scientific Director of the Harvard Microbiome Analysis Core, as well as the former co-lead of analysis for the NIH Human Microbiome Project (HMP) and currently co-PI for the “HMP2” U54 Center for Characterizing the Gut Microbial Ecosystem in Inflammatory Bowel Disease. He was a 2011 recipient of the NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) award, the highest academic recognition from the U.S. government for early career scientists. He is also the PI of five other grants (one NIH R01, two DOD, one CCFR, and one JDRF). He was originally trained in computer science and chemistry, transitioning to bioinformatics to receive his Ph.D. from the Princeton Computer Science department and Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics before joining SPH in 2009.
Dr. Huttenhower’s lab was a key participant in the NIH Human Microbiome Project, in which he co-led the analysis of almost 9Tnt of sequence data produced by over 200 investigators at more than 80 institutions and four major sequencing centers. During the HMP, Dr. Huttenhower co-led the flagship analysis for the consortium detailing the structure and function of the healthy human microbiome published in Nature. This effort has lead in a PLoS collection containing over 30 research articles and reviews from consortium members, including ten coauthored by Dr. Huttenhower. In addition to the multi-site “HMP2” Center for IBD, he currently co-leads the Microbiome Quality Control Project (MBQC), an effort among 20 labs to systematically analyze human microbiome samples, protocols, and bioinformatics methods to maximize reproducibility and translational effectiveness. More broadly, his work focuses on computational methods for microbial and microbial community functional genomics, including the integration of multiple types of different sequencing-focused assays and the integration of microbial sequencing with functional assays such as transcriptional profiling, protein-protein interaction assessment, and genetic profiling in order to better understand microbial systems biology. He has been cited over 3,800 times in the five years since the start of his faculty career. The computational tools developed by his group have been downloaded more than 15,000 times.
Dr. Huttenhower has been deeply involved in bioinformatics curriculum reform at SPH, working with Dr. Quackenbush and others to redesign and introduce a new bioinformatics area of interest within the Biostatistics Ph.D. program and the new SPH SM degree in Computational Biology and Quantitative Genetics. He currently serves as primary thesis advisor for four Ph.D. students from the Biological Sciences in Public Health program, Systems Biology, and Biostatistics programs, and has served on nine other doctoral committees at Harvard. He has advised six Biostatistics master’s students, hosted lab rotations for several doctoral students, and supervised numerous undergraduate research assistants. Dr. Huttenhower has advised or co-advised 10 postdoctoral fellows, 7 currently. He personally developed and offered annually the Genomic Data Manipulation course, an introductory bioinformatics course for biology students and Biostatistics master’s students. Dr. Huttenhower has taught summer bioinformatics and computer science courses for four years, and he received the Association for Princeton Graduate Alumni teaching award for his training work at Princeton, the school’s highest teaching award for doctoral students.
Executive Committee
Xihong Lin, PhD; Henry Pickering Walcott Professor of Biostatistics
Curtis Huttenhower, PhD; Professor of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Peter Kraft, PhD; Professor of Epidemiology