QSU Leadership

Manisha Desai, Ph.D.

Kim and Ping Li Endowed Professor of Medicine and of Biomedical Data Science
Associate Dean of Research
Section Chief of Biostatistics
Director of the Quantitative Sciences Unit
 
Dr. Desai is Kim and Ping Li Endowed Professor of Medicine and of Biomedical Data Science, Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health (by courtesy), and Associate Dean of Research at Stanford. She joined Stanford in 2009 after spending 9 years on the faculty of the Department of Biostatistics at Columbia University. 

Mary Boulos, M.P.P. 

Executive Director 
 
Ms. Mary Boulos is the Executive Director of QSU, and she joined QSU in September 2015.
 

 


QSU Staff

Derek Boothroyd, Ph.D. 

Senior Biostatistician

Derek joined the QSU in October 2014. He received his PhD in Statistics from Stanford University in 2001 where his doctoral research was applied to modeling progression of kidney function in diabetic nephropathy. 


Kristen Cunanan, Ph.D. 

Senior Biostatistician
 

Kristen joined the QSU in July 2018. Prior to QSU, she was a Research Scholar at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Kristen received her PhD in Biostatistics from University of Minnesota in 2015.


Alex Dahlen, Ph.D.

Senior Biostatistician
 

Alex joined the QSU in January of 2021.  He got his Ph. D. from Princeton in 2011, and then transitioned to working in data science and statistics.  He’s interested in data modeling and causal inference, and in applying those statistical tools to the research happening here at Stanford.


Himani Darji, M.P.H.

Biostatistician

Himani has graduated from Loyola University Chicago with MPH degree. During medical school, she focused on healthcare data and research. Her previous experiences include working with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and, Baylor Scott and White Health. 


Wei Deng, M.A.

Biostatistician

Wei joined the QSU in January 2023 after completing his MA in Statistics from UC Berkeley in 2022. Prior to joining the QSU, Wei worked in various data science roles primarily focused on civic engagement and voter participation.


Victoria Ding, M.S.

Senior Biostatistician
 

Vicki completed her M.S. in Biostatistics at the University of Washington, where she engaged in collaborative research pertaining to mental health and gerontology.


Ariadna Garcia, M.S.

Senior Data Scientist
 

Ariadna joined the QSU in January 2016. She completed her M.S. in Management Information Systems at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 


Anna Graber, Ph.D. 

Senior Data Scientist 
 

Anna joined the QSU after working for three years at the Stanford Research Informatics Center, where she gained experience with extracting data from Clarity and the OMOP CDM, working with researchers throughout the Stanford SoM. 


Bo Gu, M.S. 

Biostatistician
 

Bo graduated from New York University with a master’s degree of Biostatistics. At NYU, Bo worked as a volunteer researcher at the department of Population Health, NYU Grossman school of Medicine. Bo joined QSU in June 2022. 


Fatma Gunturkun, Ph.D.

Senior Biostatistician

Fatma joined the QSU in December of 2022. Prior to QSU, she was a senior biomedical analyst at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Center for Biomedical Informatics. She got her PhD in statistics from Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey in 2019.


Haley Hedlin, Ph.D.

Senior Biostatistician
Associate Director of Clinical Trials
 

Haley joined the QSU in 2013 after completing a postdoctoral position with the Five Colleges Consortium. She received her PhD in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins in 2011.


Alexandria Jensen, Ph.D. 

Senior Biostatistician

Alex joined the QSU in October 2022. She received her Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of Colorado – Anschutz Medical Campus. Her graduate work focused on applications of graph theory and kernel machine methods to neuroimaging data.

 

Kristopher Kapphahn, M.S.

Senior Biostatistician

Kris joined the QSU in May 2012 after completing his M.S. in Biostatistics from the University of Minnesota. In his graduate work, he studied the handling of missing data for social networking data through multiple imputation techniques.


Yann Le Guen, Ph.D.

Assistant Director of Computational Biology
 
Yann joined Stanford University in 2019 and the QSU in 2022, with a computational biology background and analyzing a variety of omics data.

 


Justin Lee, M.P.H.

Biostatistician
 
Justin joined the QSU in September 2016 after receiving his MPH degree from the University of Miami.
 

 


Jane Liang, Ph.D.

Senior Biostatistician
 

Jane joined the QSU in June 2022 after completing her PhD in biostatistics at Harvard University. Her dissertation focused on statistical methodology and software development for clinical risk assessment in panel gene testing. Prior to grad school, she worked as a scientific programmer at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Department of Preventive Medicine, Division of Biostatistics


Yuhan Liu, M.S.

Biostatistician
 

Yuhan joined the QSU in March 2021. She got her master’s degree in Biostatistics from Duke University. After that and prior to QSU, she worked as a biostatistician at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center where she worked on ophthalmology and pediatrics projects.


Di Lu, M.S.

Biostatistician
 

Di joined the QSU in February 2020. She completed her Master in Biostatistics at Duke University. 


Rong Lu, Ph.D.

Senior Biostatistician
 

Rong joined the QSU in 2020. Prior to QSU, she was a senior biostatistical consultant at UT Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW). She received her PhD in Biostatistics from The Ohio State University (OSU) in 2016.


Ingrid Luo, M.S.

Biostatistician

Ingrid joined the QSU in April 2023. She completed her M.S. in Biostatistics at the University of Washington.  


Kate Miller, Ph.D.

Senior Biostatistician
 
Kate joined the QSU in February 2022 as a Senior Biostatistician. As a statistical generalist, she has over 20 years’ experience in public health, implementation science, psychometrics, survey construction, and a range of experimental and observational study designs.  

FeiFei Qin, M.P.H.

Biostatistician
 
FeiFei joined the QSU in February 2014 after completing her M.P.H. in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from UC Berkeley.

Victor Ritter, Ph.D.

Senior Biostatistician
 

Victor joined the QSU in February 2022. He got his Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in August of 2021 and is interested in statistical methods for non and semiparametric inference for time-to-event data with a focus on competing risks, cure rate, and multistate models.


Blake Shaw, M.S.

Biostatistician
 

Blake joined the QSU in August 2022. He completed his MS in Biostatistics at UC Davis. 


Sa Shen, Ph.D.

Senior Biostatistician
 

Sa received her Ph.D in statistics from the University of Pittsburgh. She has more than 20 years’ collaborating experience in working with researchers, scientists, physicians and clinicians on grant proposals and funded projects. Prior to Stanford, she was a senior biostatistician at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 


Megha Tandel, M.P.H.

Biostatistician
 
Megha joined the QSU in January 2022. She completed her MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Southern California (USC).

Yingjie (Isabel) Weng, M.H.S.

Senior Biostatistician
 

Isabel joined the QSU in October 2017. She completed her M.H.S in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University in 2014.


Amy Zhang, M.P.H.

Biostatistician
 

Amy joined the QSU in April 2022. She completed her MPH in Global Epidemiology at Emory University. Prior to the QSU, Amy was an ORISE Fellow at the Center for Disease Control and Preventioin, supporting spina bifida research in the Division of Birth Defects and Infant Disorders.


QSU Administrative Staff

Nazeea Akhter, M.P.A.

Operations Program Manager
 

Ms. Nazeea Akhter joined Stanford in 2022 to lead program planning and operations and ultimately, achieve goals that the QSU has for the team. Nazeea brings many years of management and leadership experience from her prior roles in large hospital systems. She holds a Master of Public Administration from New York University, where she specialized in health policy and management.

Ni Deng, M.S.

Data Analyst
 

Ni joined QSU in 2019. Prior to QSU, she worked at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research located in Cambridge, MA.

Cyra Ente

Program Coordinator
 

Cyra joined QSU in April 2022. She completed her bachelor’s in public health at the University of North Florida in 2021.

James Miller, M.B.A.

Finance and Grants Management Specialist
 

Jim came to Stanford in 2015, and spent four years as an award manager with the Department of Pathology before joining QSU in February 2021.  Prior to Stanford, he spent much of his career in corporate finance and corporate treasury.  Jim holds a BA and MBA from Northwestern University and The University of Chicago, respectively.