Bhramar Mukherjee

{{short description|Indian-American biostatistician, data scientist}}

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| name = Bhramar Mukherjee

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| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1973|10|22}}

| birth_place = Kolkata, India

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| nationality = American

| citizenship = America

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| occupation = Biostatistician, data scientist, professor and researcher.

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| title = Senior Associate Dean for Data Science and Data Equity, Anna MR Lauder Professor of Biostatistics, Professor of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, Professor of Statistics and Data Science, Yale University.

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| alma_mater = Presidency College (BSc)
Indian Statistical Institute (M.Stat)
Purdue University (MS, PhD)

| thesis_title = Optimal designs for estimating the path of a stochastic process.

| thesis_url = https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/dissertations/AAI3043760/

| thesis_year = 2001

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| doctoral_advisor = William J. Studden

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| workplaces = University of Michigan Yale University

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Bhramar Mukherjee is an Indian-American biostatistician, data scientist, professor and researcher. She is currently serving as the inaugural Senior Associate Dean of Public Health Data Science and Data Equity at the Yale School of Public Health from August 1, 2024.{{cite web|url=https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/award-winning-statistician-joins-yale-school-of-public-health-leadership/|title=Award-Winning Statistician Joins Yale School of Public Health Leadership|first=Colin|last=Poitras|date=8 April 2024|accessdate=9 April 2024}} She is also appointed as Anna MR Lauder Professor of Biostatistics, Professor of Epidemiology (Chronic Disease) with secondary appointment as Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Yale University.{{cite web|url=https://ysph.yale.edu/profile/bhramar-mukherjee/|title=Bhramar Mukherjee, Ph.D, MS.}}

Mukherjee holds a Senior Honorary Visiting Fellow position at the Biostatistics Unit of the Medical Research Council, working on the theme of population health at the University of Cambridge, UK.{{cite web|url=https://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/people/in-alphabetical-order/h-to-m/bhramar-mukherjee/|title=Bhramar Mukherjee, MRC BSU}} Mukherjee is also appointed as an overseas fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge. She is a visiting Professor in the Department of Biology at the Trivedi School of Biosciences, Ashoka University, India {{cite web|url=https://www.ashoka.edu.in/profile/bhramar-mukherjee-2/|title=Bhramar Mukherjee, Ashoka}}.

Prior to joining Yale, she worked University of Michigan from 2006-2024, where she was appointed as the John D. Kalbfleisch Distinguished University Professor of Biostatistics, Siobán D. Harlow Collegiate Professor of Public Health and the Chair of Department of Biostatistics, a professor of epidemiology and global public health at the University of Michigan.{{cite web|url=https://sph.umich.edu/faculty-profiles/mukherjee-bhramar.html|title=Bhramar Mukherjee, Ph.D.}} She served as the associate director for Quantitative Data Sciences and Cancer Control and Population Sciences at University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center.{{cite web|url=https://www.rogelcancercenter.org/about/leadership|title= Leadership|date= 6 September 2013}} In 2023 Mukherjee was also appointed as the inaugural Assistant Vice President of Research: Research Data Strategy at the University of Michigan Office of Vice President of Research.

Mukherjee's research has been focused on the development and application of statistical methods in epidemiology, environmental health and disease risk assessment. She has authored over 400 articles in statistics, biostatistics, epidemiology and medical Journals. She has led several federally funded grants as a principal investigator. Her focus has been to integrate diverse data sources for efficient inference.{{cite web|url=https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=7202760576|title= Scopus – Mukherjee, Bhramar}}

Mukherjee is a fellow of the American Statistical Association{{Cite web|url=https://magazine.amstat.org/blog/2018/03/01/bhramar-mukherjee/|title=Bhramar Mukherjee|date=March 2018 }}, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute.{{cite web|url=https://www.isi-web.org/index.php/about-isi/who-is-isi/members/indivual|title=Individual Members|access-date=2019-10-10|archive-date=2017-07-29|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170729010059/https://www.isi-web.org/index.php/about-isi/who-is-isi/members/indivual|url-status=dead}} She was elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2022.{{cite web|url=https://sph.umich.edu/news/2022posts/bhramar-mukherjee-elected-to-the-national-academy-of-medicine.html| title=Bhramar Mukherjee Elected to National Academy of Medicine}} She has served as the past Chair for Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) for a three-year term 2019-2021.{{cite web|url=https://community.amstat.org/copss/home|title=Welcome to the COPSS Homepage}}She is currently the President-elect for ENAR {{cite web|url=https://www.enar.org/about/index.cfm|title=ENAR}} a major professional society for biostatisticians.

Education

Mukherjee was born and raised in Kolkata, India. She received her B.Sc. in statistics from Presidency College in Kolkata in 1994 and her M.Stat from Indian Statistical Institute in 1996. At the completion of her M.Stat, The Ramakrishna Mission awarded her the Debesh-Kamal scholarship for studying abroad and Mukherjee moved to the United States, where she received her M.S. in mathematical statistics in 1999 and then her Ph.D. in statistics in 2001, both from Purdue University.{{cite web|url=https://www.indiawest.com/news/global_indian/university-of-michigan-cancer-center-appoints-indian-american-biostatistician/article_98bb622e-9ad0-11e5-ad4e-dff7a5a037cb.html|title=University of Michigan Cancer Center Appoints Indian American Biostatistician|access-date=2019-10-10|archive-date=2019-07-22|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190722104659/https://www.indiawest.com/news/global_indian/university-of-michigan-cancer-center-appoints-indian-american-biostatistician/article_98bb622e-9ad0-11e5-ad4e-dff7a5a037cb.html|url-status=dead}} Her advisor was William J. Studden and her thesis title was "Optimal designs for estimating the path of a stochastic process".{{cite web|url=https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/dissertations/AAI3043760/|title=Optimal designs for estimating the path of a stochastic process|date=January 2001 |pages=1–109 |last1=Mukherjee |first1=Bhramar }}

Career

After completing her Ph.D., Mukherjee joined University of Florida as an assistant professor of Statistics and taught there until 2006, when she left to join the University of Michigan as the John G. Searle Assistant Professorship. In 2009, she became associate professor and in 2013, full professor. She was awarded the John D. Kalbfleisch Collegiate Professorship at the University of Michigan in 2015. She was appointed the associate chair of Department of Biostatistics at University of Michigan in 2014 and became the first woman chair of the department in 2018.

In 2016, Mukherjee was appointed the associate director of cancer control and population studies at University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center, where she led the Cancer Center's research on cancer screening, epidemiology and prevention, as well as research on cancer outcomes, disparities and new models of cancer care delivery. After 4 years in this role she transitioned as the newly appointed associate director for Quantitative Data Sciences in 2020.

Mukherjee was the founding director of a cross-disciplinary summer institute at the University of Michigan School of Public Health{{cite web|url=https://sph.umich.edu/bdsi/|title=Big Data Summer Institute}} to train undergraduates at the intersection of big data and human health. This program has trained 357 undergraduate students from 2015-2024. Mukherjee has served as the cohort development core co-director in the University of Michigan's Precision Health Initiative and leads the Center for Precision Health Data Science.{{cite web|url=https://sph.umich.edu/precision-health-data-science/|title=Center for Precision Health Data Science}} In 2023, she was appointed as the inaugural Assistant Vice President of Research-Research Data Strategy to strengthen data analysis infrastructure across the University of Michigan. The same year, she was also the recipient of a Distinguished University Professorship at the University of Michigan, one of the highest academic honors in the University.

Mukherjee was the statistics editor for the American Journal of Preventive Medicine from 2013 to 2014, an Associate Editor of Statistics in Medicine from 2015 to 2018, and an Associate Editor of Biometrics from 2008 to 2018. She has served on the editorial board of the Harvard Data Science Review{{cite journal |title=Editors · Harvard Data Science Review |url=https://hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/edboard |journal=Harvard Data Science Review |publisher=MIT Press |access-date=28 February 2021 |language=en}}, Genetic Epidemiology.{{cite web|url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10982272|title=Genetic Epidemiology}}, and Science Advances.

Research and work

Mukherjee's research has primarily focused on the development and application of statistical methods in epidemiology, analysis of observational data and disease risk assessment. Her current interests include electronic health records, shrinkage methods, data integration, modeling of high dimensional exposure data and studies of gene-environment interaction. Her collaborations span in the areas of reproductive epidemiology, cancer epidemiology and environmental health. She has authored over 360 articles in scientific journals and has led several federally funded grants as principal investigator.{{cite web|url=https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-zwWIG4AAAAJ&hl=en|title=Bhramar Mukherjee}} Mukherjee is currently serving as one of the principal investigators of a large cohort building grant MI-CARES (Michigan Cancer and Research on the Environment Study),{{cite web| url= https://micares.health|title=MICARES}} studying the impact of toxic exposures on cancer risks in Michigan residents.

One of the focal points of Mukherjee's research is to understand how the interaction between genes and environment increases or decreases cancer risk. In this area, she has studied how lifestyle factors such as diet and physical activity coupled with the genetic makeup of an individual impact their cancer risk. She has also worked on developing models that use genetic data to predict which individuals have a higher cancer risk.{{cite web|url=https://www.genengnews.com/insights/polygenic-risk-scores-show-utility-for-stratifying-disease-risk/|title=Polygenic Risk Scores Show Utility for Stratifying Disease Risk|date=21 February 2018 }} In 2018, Mukherjee and her colleagues conducted a phenome-wide association study to see if the polygenic risk scores for different cancers are associated with multiple phenotypes. Their study showed that polygenic risk scores can help in stratifying the risk of different cancers in patients.Fritsche L, Gruber SB, Wu Z, Schmidt EM, Zawistowski M, Moser SE, Blanc V, Brummet C, Kheterpal S, Abecasis GA, Mukherjee B. Association of Polygenic Risk Scores for Multiple Cancers in a Phenomewide Study: Results from The Michigan Genomics Initiative, The American Journal of Human Genetics, 102:1048-1061, 2018, PMCID: PMC5992124{{cite web|url=https://www.genomeweb.com/microarrays-multiplexing/several-cancer-types-significantly-tied-polygenic-risk-scores-new-phewas|title=Several Cancer Types Significantly Tied to Polygenic Risk Scores in New PheWAS|date=17 May 2018 }} During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mukherjee and her study team took an active role in modeling the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in India. This work received significant attention from the media {{cite news|url=https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/all-that-matters/it-is-the-coronavirus-that-is-killing-the-economy-not-just-the-lockdown-says-prof-bhramar-mukherjee/articleshow/76914246.cms|title=It is the coronavirus that is killing the economy, not just the lockdown|website=The Times of India |date=12 July 2020 }} and from the scientific community.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/opinion/coronavirus-preprints.html|title=How to Identify Flawed Research Before It Becomes Dangerous|work=The New York Times |date=20 July 2020 |last1=Eisen |first1=Michael B. |last2=Tibshirani |first2=Robert }}

Awards and honors

2008 – 2009 – John G. Searle Assistant Professorship, University of Michigan
2011 – Elected Member, The International Statistical Institute
2012 – Fellow, American Statistical Association
2015 – John D. Kalbfleisch Collegiate Professorship, University of Michigan
2016 – Gertrude Cox Award, Washington Statistical Society
2016 – Elected Senior Fellow, Michigan Society of Fellows
2017 – Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
2019 – Fellow, Executive Leadership for Women in Academic Medicine (ELAM){{cite web|url=https://drexel.edu/medicine/academics/womens-health-and-leadership/elam/leaders-forum-other-events/leaders-forum/2019-forum/|title=2019 Leaders Forum|date=7 February 2022 }}
2018 – Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award, University of Michigan
2019 – Rogel Scholar Award, University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center{{Cite web|url=https://www.rogelcancercenter.org/news/archive/rogel-cancer-center-names-14-inaugural-rogel-scholars|title=Rogel Cancer Center names 14 inaugural Rogel Scholars|date=8 May 2019 }}
2020 – Adrienne L Cupples Award, Boston University School of Public Health{{cite web|url=https://www.aspph.org/michigan-dr-bhramar-mukherjee-selected-as-2020-l-adrienne-cupples-award-winner/|title=Michigan: Dr. Bhramar Mukherjee Selected as 2020 L. Adrienne Cupples Award Winner|access-date=2020-02-14|archive-date=2021-09-26|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210926041830/https://www.aspph.org/michigan-dr-bhramar-mukherjee-selected-as-2020-l-adrienne-cupples-award-winner/|url-status=dead}}
2021 – Distinguished Women Scholars Award, Purdue University{{cite web|url=https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/purduetoday/releases/2021/Q1/five-alumnae-to-be-honored-as-distinguished-women-scholars.html|title=Five Alumnae to be honored as Distinguished Women Scholars}}
2021 – Janet L Norwood Award, University of Alabama (Birmingham) School of Public Health{{cite web|url=https://www.uab.edu/soph/home/news-events/news/bhramar-mukherjee-receives-janet-l-norwood-award/|title=Bhramar Mukherjee Receives Janet L Norwood Award}}
2022 – Sarah Goddard Power Award, University of Michigan {{ cite web|url=https://record.umich.edu/articles/three-faculty-members-to-receive-goddard-power-awards/|title=Three Faculty Members to receive Goddard Power Awards}}
2022 – Elected Member, The National Academy of Medicine.{{cite web|url=https://nam.edu/national-academy-of-medicine-elects-100-new-members-2022/|title=National Academy of Medicine Elects 100 New Members|date=17 October 2022 }}
2022 – Visiting By Fellow, Churchill College, University of Cambridge.
2023 – Karl E Peace Award for statistical contribution towards betterment of society awarded by the American Statistical Association {{cite web|url=https://sph.umich.edu/news/2023posts/bhramar-mukherjee-jeremy-taylor-asa-awards-2023.html|title=Mukherjee and Taylor Wins ASA awards}}
2023 – Jerome Sacks award for outstanding cross-disciplinary research awarded by the National Institute of Statistical Sciences {{ cite web|url=https://www.niss.org/news/celebrating-niss-awards-2023|title=Celebrating NISS Awards 2023|date=6 August 2023 }}
2023 – John D Kalbfleisch Distinguished University Professorship, University of Michigan,{{cite web|url=https://record.umich.edu/articles/regents-approve-distinguished-university-professors-for-2023/|title=2023 Distinguished University Professors}}
2023 – Siobán D. Harlow Collegiate Professor of Public Health, University of Michigan.
2024 – Distinguished Science Alumnae Award, College of Science, Purdue University.
2024 – Marvin Zelen Award for Leadership in Statistical Sciences, Harvard Biostatistics {{cite web|url=https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/biostatistics/zelenaward/|title=Zelen Award|date=13 May 2016 }}
2024 – Overseas Fellow, Churchill College, University of Cambridge.
2024 – Anna MR Lauder Professor of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, Yale University.
2025 – Elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.
2025 - Elected Member,Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering.

Selected articles

Sinha S, Mukherjee B, Ghosh M, Mallick BK, and Raymond JC. Bayesian semi-parametric analysis of matched case-control studies with missing exposure. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 100:591-601, 2005.
Mukherjee B and Chatterjee N. Exploiting gene-environment independence for analysis of case-control studies: An empirical-Bayes type shrinkage estimator to trade off between bias and efficiency. Biometrics, 64(3):685-94, 2008, {{PMID|18162111}}.
Kastrinos F, Mukherjee B, Tayob N, Sparr J, Raymond VM, Wang F, Bandipalliam P, Stoffel EM, Gruber SB, Syngal S. The Risk of Pancreatic Cancer in Lynch Syndrome. Journal of the American Medical Association, 302(16):1790–95, 2009, PMCID: PMC4091624.
Mukherjee B, Ahn J, Gruber SB, and Chatterjee N. Testing gene-environment interaction in large-scale association studies: possible choices and comparison. American Journal of Epidemiology, 175(3):177-90, 2012, PMCID: PMC3286201. Discussion paper with invited commentary.
Mukherjee B, DeLancey JO, Raskin L, et al. Risk of Non-Melanoma Cancers in CDKN2A Mutation Carriers. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 104(12):953-56, 2012, PMCID: PMC3379723.
Sun Z, Tao Y, Li S, Ferguson KK, Meeker JD, Park SK, Batterman SA, Mukherjee B. Statistical strategies for constructing health risk models with multiple pollutants and their interactions: possible choices and comparison. Environmental Health, 12(1):85, 2013, PMCID: PMC3857674.
Boonstra PS, Mukherjee B and Taylor JMG. Bayesian shrinkage methods for partially observed high-dimensional data. The Annals of Applied Statistics, 7(4):2272–92, 2013, PMCID: PMC3891514.
He Z, Zhang M, Lee S, Smith JA, Guo X, Palmas W, Kardia SLR, Diez-Roux AV, Mukherjee B. Multi-marker tests for joint association in longitudinal studies using the genetic random field model. Biometrics, 71(3):606-15, 2015, PMCID: PMC4601568.
He Z, Zhang M, Lee S, Smith JA, Kardia SLR, Diez Roux AVD, Mukherjee B, Set-Based Tests for Gene-Environment Interaction in Longitudinal Studies. The Journal of the American Statistical Association, Application and Case Studies, 112(519):966-978, 2017, PMCID: PMC5954413.
Fritsche L, Gruber SB, Wu Z, Schmidt EM, Zawistowski M, Moser SE, Blanc V, Brummet C, Kheterpal S, Abecasis GA, Mukherjee B. Association of Polygenic Risk Scores for Multiple Cancers in a Phenomewide Study: Results from The Michigan Genomics Initiative, The American Journal of Human Genetics, 102:1048–1061, 2018, PMCID: PMC5992124.
Ray D, Salvatore M, Bhattacharyya R, ..., Ghosh P. Mukherjee, B. Predictions, role of interventions and effects of a historic national lockdown in India's response to the COVID-19 pandemic: data science call to arms. Harvard Data Sci Rev. 2020;2020(Suppl 1), PMCID: PMC7326342.
Chen C, Haupert SR, Zimmermann L, Shi X, Fritsche LG, Mukherjee B. Global Prevalence of Post-Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Condition or Long COVID: A Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review. J Infect Dis.2022 Nov 1;226(9):1593-1607. PMCID: PMC9047189.
Beesley LJ, Mukherjee B. Statistical inference for association studies using electronic health records: handling both selection bias and outcome misclassification. Biometrics 2022 Mar;78(1):214-226. PMID: 33179768.
Salvatore M, Kundu R, Shi X, Friese CR, Lee S, Fritsche LG, Mondul AM, Hanauer D, Pearce CL, Mukherjee B. To weight or not to weight? The effect of selection bias in 3 large electronic health record-linked biobanks and recommendations for practice. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2024 20;31(7):1479-1492. PMID: 38742457; PMCID: PMC11187425.
Kundu R, Shi X, Morrison J, Barrett J, Mukherjee B. A framework for understanding selection bias in real-world healthcare data.J R Stat Soc Ser A Stat Soc.2024 May 2;187(3):606-635. PMID: 39281782; PMCID: PMC11393555.

References

Category:American people of Indian descent

Category:University of Michigan faculty

Category:Purdue University alumni

Category:Living people

Category:Presidency University, Kolkata alumni

Category:Indian Statistical Institute alumni

Category:1973 births

Category:American statisticians

Category:Women scientists from West Bengal

Category:Fellows of Churchill College, Cambridge

Category:Members of the National Academy of Medicine

Category:Yale University faculty