QSU + BMIR = Home for Quantitative Scientists

Effective March 1, the Quantitative Sciences Unit (QSU) became a unit of the Biomedical Informatics Research (BMIR) Division of the Department of Medicine (DoM).

What can QSU do for you?

Quite a lot, actually. If you want to design a clinical study of some kind, you will want to add a statistical scientist to your research team. You need the expertise of a statistician for such things as a power calculation, but you will also want to have someone on board who can assure that you collect data in a way that will make it easy to interpret your results. You will need someone to collect your data, track it, and house it securely so that no HIPAA rules are violated and all IRB regulations are followed. When all the data have been collected, you will need someone to analyze and interpret your results. You will find that someone in the QSU.

Statisticians in the QSU also do their own methodological research and create software for implementing those methods.

Lastly, they are available to mentor you in research methods and guide you through the use of more sophisticated statistical methods.

Why make this move?

The move, according to QSU Director Manisha Desai, PhD, “allows QSU to share its academic home with other quantitative scientists. This move to BMIR will enable us to expand our expertise in collaborative work into bioinformatics.”

And, she adds, “the QSU will continue to be a Department-wide resource, available to all investigators in the Department of Medicine.”

How can you get started with the QSU?

Faculty and fellows in the DoM can collaborate with the QSU by contacting the QSU program coordinator, Inna Sayfer (isayfer@stanford.edu).