McCance Center adds Biostatistician to Team

We recently welcomed Yan Gao, PhD, as a Senior Biostatistician to the McCance Center team. Yan comes to our center with a great deal of experience from Eli Lilly, where she developed statistical analysis plans to assess the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of an Alzheimer’s disease treatment. Prior to Eli Lilly, Yan worked as a biostatistician at the Jackson Heart Study at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. She has expertise with big data (omics) management and analysis and has co-authored publications on chronic diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity, and kidney disease.

Yan says she’s excited to be part of the McCance interdisciplinary team that is pushing the boundaries on brain health.

When asked to outline how her work relates to research, Yan offered, “A biostatistician helps to make sense of data in health and medical research. Imagine you're running a clinical trial or collecting data from patients — a biostatistician helps to design the study to make sure it's scientifically sound, and then analyzes the data to answer key questions. Are treatments working? Are certain risk factors more important than others? We help to turn numbers into insights and to ensure that the conclusions researchers draw are valid and useful for improving care.”