Dr. Lei Liu is a Professor in the Division of Biostatistics at Washington University in St. Louis. He has diverse research interests in biostatistical and data science methods, including survival analysis, longitudinal data analysis, spline regression, personalized medicine, and machine learning. His research is focused on the analysis of high dimensional omics (epigenetics and microbiome) data, medical cost data, and joint models of multi-outcome data. He collaborates with clinicians in various medical fields, e.g., cancer, cardiovascular, addiction, ophthalmology, nephrology, infectious disease, asthma, and diabetes. Dr. Liu is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. He is an associated editor of Biometrics and Statistics in Medicine, and an editorial board member of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and Frontiers in Psychiatry. He is a standing member of NIH Biostatistical Methods and Research Design Study Section (2016-22), the only study section focusing on biostatistical methodology development. He also reviews grants frequently for other NIH study sections and other funding agencies around the world.

My commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion in academia is grounded in my personal experience from research and teaching. I have fruitful collaborations with underrepresented minority (URM) colleagues, resulting in over 20 joint publications, and many NIH funded grants. At Washington University in St. Louis, I am a faculty mentor of the NHLBI funded Programs to Increase Diversity among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research (PRIDE). Through this program I help promote the research capability of the junior URM faculty members, in particular the grant writing skills. I will continue to pursue efforts to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion