Wendy Shih, DrPH

I received my Dr.PH in Biostatistics from University of California-Los Angeles, working on the development of estimating biological age using ensemble predictors in machine learning. I joined the department of Psychiatry at UCLA as a post-doctorate research fellow from 2016-2018, School of Public Health at Loma Linda University as an assistant professor in 2018, and finally returned to UCLA as a principal statistician in 2020. My areas of expertise include complex intervention study design (multi-site RCTs, clustered RCTs, SMART trials) and analysis, statistical methods for analyzing longitudinal and clustered data, machine learning techniques, and treatment mechanism. I collaborate with researchers in diverse areas including autism spectrum disorder, genetics, and gastrointestinal disorders.

For the past 15 years, I have been involved in multiple multi-site, randomized clinical trials in ASD research evaluating the efficacy and effectiveness of ASD interventions, developing meaningful and targeted measurements for both research and community stakeholders, and understanding the mechanism of different ASD interventions. I was the lead biostatistician for 4 AIRB grants that involved clustered randomized control trials in school based and agency-based settings. I have extensive experience in developing research designs, executing experimental research design including randomization, power/sample size calculations, and performing data analyses arising from different designs.