Susan M. Sereika

PhD
Professor
Associate Dean for Research and Education Support Services
Health & Community Systems

Profile

My area of research is statistics. The area of statistics that particularly interests me is the modeling and assessment of longitudinal data. I have collaborated as a co-investigator and statistician on a number of research projects with either intramural or extramural funding in the health sciences, many of which have targeted regimen adherence using multiple modes of monitoring.

Teaching

I have taught statistics at the master’s and doctoral levels in both the School of Nursing and the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. Currently I teach a doctoral-level theory course offered in the School of Nursing on advanced quantitative methods, covering such topics as data screening; missing data analysis (evaluation and imputation); correlational analysis; regression analysis; categorical data analysis; logistic regression; MANOVA/MANCOVA; repeated measures analysis; and meta-analysis. This course is web-supported through BlackBoard 9.1. Students can participate in seminars remotely using VoIP.

In the past I have taught statistical computing/programming and applied regression in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh. As a guest lecturer in statistics and research methods courses I have taught basic statistics, sample size and effect size estimation, meta-analysis, structural equation modeling, and data mining. I have also led independent studies with PhD students choosing to focus on specific areas of statistics such as survival analysis, repeated measures analysis, structural equation modeling, and logistic/ordinal/polychotomous regression. I have served on a number of thesis and dissertation committees in nursing, biostatistics, education, and epidemiology and have mentored pre- and post-doctoral fellows and research faculty who have interest in advanced quantitative methods.

Service

In addition to functioning as a faculty statistician to the researchers in the School of Nursing, I am the Director of the Center for Research and Education in the School of Nursing. Currently, I am a co-investigator and statistician on a number of NIH-funded R01-level projects. I am also the leader of the Statistics Core for a longstanding NHLBI-funded program project (P01) in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and a co-investigator and senior statistician in the Translation Core for a NINR-funded P01 in the School of Nursing.

In the past I have served as the core leader of data management and analysis cores of two P30-funced core centers. I have participated on committees focusing on issues related to information technology within the University of Pittsburgh at school and University levels and outside the University of Pittsburgh in several professional organizations. I serve on NIH study sections as a grant reviewer and sometime as chair. I have served as a statistical reviewer for a number of high-impact behavioral and health science journals and I was the statistical consulting editor for the Annals of Behavioral Medicine.