# Boston University Summer Institute for Research Education in Biostatistics

> **NIH NIH R25** · BOSTON UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CAMPUS · 2021 · $245,974

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Boston University (BU) proposes an intensive six-week program entitled the `Boston University Summer Institute
for Research Education in Biostatistics' (BU SIBS), based on a comprehensive curriculum that includes
biostatistical analysis, epidemiological analysis, infectious disease, design and analysis of clinical trials,
statistical genetics/genomics, and statistical computing. The curriculum is rigorous and interspersed with current
examples that highlight the relevance of biostatistics with particular emphasis on recent trends including
biomedical big data and high performance computing, and it is designed to interest undergraduates, recent
graduates and early graduate students from across the US in the many exciting opportunities in biostatistics.
Our faculty is enthusiastic and committed to the program, as are our panel of outside speakers who are practicing
biostatisticians and epidemiologists from academia and industry, and physician-scientists working on important
highly-publicized studies such as the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's (NHLBI) Framingham Heart
Study and Jackson Heart Study. Strong institutional support from BU provides a 50% tuition scholarship and an
infrastructure to support all aspects of student life during the program. The typical daily schedule will include a
morning lecture followed by hands-on instruction in the SAS or R programming language in a computer
classroom. After lunch at the BU dining facilities participants will return to the computer classroom to either
complete short assignments relevant to the lecture content or to work in small groups on a research project. The
research project will span the entire program and will deeply engage students with a research mentor as the
students choose of one several provided data sets, determine a research question, develop an analysis plan,
conduct the analysis, and synthesize and present results. The daily schedule will also be interspersed with guest
lecturers (who typically eat lunch with the students to provide additional opportunity for informal communication)
and site visits (e.g. to the Framingham Heart Study). BU has run a six-week intensive Summer Institute for
training in Biostatistics (SIBS) funded by NHLBI since 2003 (T15 HL075881; T15 HL097791; R25 HL131491).
As of the date of this proposal, 13 sessions have been completed during the months of June and July of 2004
through 2017 and the 14th session is in progress (June 11-July 20, 2018). Our track record is very strong. We
successfully maintain steady contact with over 90% of our prior (2004-2017) BU SIBS students and about 60%
of our BU SIBS alumni have either entered into graduate programs in biostatistics or taken jobs in the field. Our
experience in planning and implementing our prior successful BU SIBS programs will enable us to rapidly
implement the new BU SIBS program, maintaining proven aspects of our past program while introducing new
elements such online modules, an infectious...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10130610
- **Project number:** 5R25HL147221-03
- **Recipient organization:** BOSTON UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CAMPUS
- **Principal Investigator:** ANITA L DESTEFANO
- **Activity code:** R25 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $245,974
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-03-15 → 2022-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10130610

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10130610, Boston University Summer Institute for Research Education in Biostatistics (5R25HL147221-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10130610. Licensed CC0.

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