Dr. Xie is currently principal investigator of an NIH-funded statistical method R01 grant that aims to develop novel statistical methods for assessing dementia risk in Parkinson's disease and related disorders. She is also the principal investigator and director of the biostatistics and data management core for three NIH-funded neurodegenerative disease research centers/program project grants: the Alzheimer's Disease Center, Center on Alpha-Synuclein Strains in Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders, and the frontotemporal lobar degeneration program project grant.

Dr. Xie's current research goals are twofold. First, she continues to develop new statistical methods for survival analysis, missing data, measurement error problems, high dimensional data, biomarker evaluations, longitudinal analysis, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis in response to methodological problems that arise in her collaborative work in the research of neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, frontotemporal dementia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and in other collaborative research. Second, she continues to study biomarkers to improve disease-modifying therapy development and early detection in neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr. Xie is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association. She is currently an Associate Editor of Alzheimer's & Dementia. She is also an elected standing member of the Parkinson Study Group Scientific Review Committee (2016 – present). Dr. Xie was the recipient of the 1999 Young Investigator Award of Statistics in the Epidemiology Section of the American Statistical Association, and in 2005 and 2011 she received the University of Pennsylvania Graduate Program in Biostatistics Teaching Award. She was an elected standing member of the National Institute of Aging Alzheimer's Disease Center Data Core Steering Committee during 2007 and 2010 (Chair during July 2008 and July 2009). She was an elected standing member of the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center (NACC) Scientific Review Committee for National Institute of Aging (2015-2019).

Sharon Xie’s Research Lab:

 

Current Members:

Sharon Xie, PhD, principal investigator and Professor of Biostatistics

Panpan Zhang, PhD, postdoctoral researcher

Yidan Shi, PhD, postdoctoral researcher

Hayley Richardson, PhD student in biostatistics

Sarah Weinshel, undergraduate student

Yanping Xiong, MS, IT specialist/Data manager/Data analyst

Chris Ernst, BS, IT specialist

Previous PhD students who completed PhD dissertation under Dr. Xie’s supervision:

Matthew White, PhD, 2012

Dissertation title: Statistical Methods for Evaluating Diagnostic Biomarkers in the Presence of Measurement Error

First job: Faculty (Instructor), Harvard Medical School;

Honors: Winner of 2011 Young Investigator Award from Statistics in Epidemiology Section of American Statistical Association and 2012 ENAR Distinguished Student Paper Award

 

Jarcy Zee, PhD, 2014

Dissertation title: Survival Analysis with Uncertain Endpoints Using an Internal Validation Subsample

First job: Research Scientist, Arbor Research Collaborative for Health; Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at Penn starting fall 2020

Honors: Winner of 2014 Student Travel Award from the Biometrics Section of the American Statistical Association

 

Lior Rennert, PhD, 2018

Dissertation title: Statistical Methods for Truncated Survival Data

First job: Tenure-track Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, Department of Public Health Sciences, Clemson University

Honors: Winner of W. Edwards Deming Student Scholar Award from the 2017 Annual Deming Conference on Applied Statistics

 

Leah Suttner, PhD, 2019

Dissertation Title: Statistical Methods for Censored and Missing Data in Survival and Longitudinal Analysis

First job: Senior Scientist, Biostatistics at Merck

Honors: Winner of 2016 Biopharmaceutical Applied Statistics Symposium (BASS) Student Travel Award; GlaxoSmithKline Graduate Student Fellowship, 2016-2019

 

Carrie Caswell, PhD, 2020

Dissertation Title: Measurement Error and Missing Data Methods in Biomarker Research

First job: Principal Statistician, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)

Honors: Winner of W. Edwards Deming Student Scholar Award from the 2018 Annual Deming Conference on Applied Statistics.