Hal S. Stern, PhD

I am Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Irvine, and until recently, Dean, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. I have a long-standing research program in developing and studying Bayesian statistical methods in the context of applications in the biological/health, physical and social sciences. Examples include spatial models for disease incidence and genomic data, analysis of reliability and reproducibility of imaging studies, and statistical methods for missing data in longitudinal data analyses. I also have extensive experience in a wide range of collaborative biostatistics research projects. I have previously served as director of the Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design (BERD) unit of the UCI Institute for Clinical and Translational Science and as co-chair of the Statistics Working Group of the NIH-funded multi-campus brain imaging FBIRN grant. I currently collaborate with neurologists and psychologists as PI of the Biostatistics, Computation and Data Management Core of the Conte Center at UC Irvine funded by NIMH to measure fragmentation and unpredictability of maternal and environmental signals on the developing brain and assess the impact of these patterns on multiple mental-health-relate outcomes. The proposed Conte Center renewal builds on this effort to test the hypothesis that fragmentation and unpredictability of early life maternal and environmental signals (FRAG) contribute to adolescent vulnerabilities and adult mental illnesses via mechanisms involving aberrant development and maturation of emotional brain circuits.