Sahir Rai Bhatnagar
Assistant Professor, Biostatistics, McGill University.
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, and the Department of Diagnostic Radiology at McGill University. I am broadly interested in developing statistical methods for high-dimensional data using penalized regression methods. My current work is focused on penalized mixed models and non-linear interactions. I previously developped a methodological approach for identifying clusters of features that are sensitive to environmental exposures. I'm also interested in survival analysis methods, interactive plots, and reproducible research.
Funding
My research is partially supported by NSERC through a Discovery Grant and a Discovery Launch Supplement Grant, by CIHR through a Project Grant, by the McGill Initiative in Computational Medicine through a Research Match Grant, by CANSSI through the Collaborative Research Teams Program, and by Mitacs through an Accelerate Grant.
Research Opportunities
I have opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to assist with various research projects related to high-dimensional data, statistical genetics, imaging analysis and software development. I am looking for students with a background in (bio)statistics and/or computer science and knowledge of at least one of the following programming languages: R, Python, Julia, C++, shell scripting, PLINK. I am also open to co-supervise epidemiology students and medical residents who are seeking to answer clinically relevant questions with large databases.
Click to read instructions before contacting me, or your email is likely to be ignored. I value people who are attentive to details.
Undergraduates at McGill:
I welcome these emails, but they should include a CV, research interests, list of relevant course work, a transcript, and your programming experience. The subject line should contain the word "consideration for undergraduate research project" to indicate these instructions have been read.
Epidemiology graduate students and Medical residents at McGill:
Include a brief description of your research interests and why you think I would be a good fit to be your co-supervisor.
Prospective graduate students:
I welcome these emails, but they should include a CV, research interests, list of relevant course work, a transcript, and your programming experience. The subject line should contain the word "consideration for graduate research supervision" to indicate these instructions have been read. You must apply and gain admission to the graduate program in Biostatistics, Statistics, Quantitative Life Sciences or Epidemiology. In your research statement, you should mention my name and state clearly how your research interests align with my research program. If you are admitted, then I'm happy to discuss supervision.
news
| Mar 22, 2022 | Arthur Ayestas Hilgert, an undergraduate student in my lab, has been awarded a NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award. He will be working on tuning-free ridge regression in high dimensions applied to polygenic risk score prediction. Congrats Arthur! |
| Mar 17, 2022 | Jiayi Geng, an undergraduate student in my lab, has been awarded a McGill Science Undergraduate Research Award (SURA). She will be working on variable selection for competing-risk analysis using case-base sampling. Congrats Jiayi! |
| Feb 26, 2022 | The ‘Poisson’ Distribution: history, re-enactments, adaptations with Jim Hanley accepted for pulication in The American Statistician. |
| Jan 20, 2022 | CIHR Project Grant on Leveraging high-volume data to characterize age and individual-specific vital signs and to develop novel geriatric vital signs that optimally predict clinical outcomes in older adults awarded. Well done Quoc and Tina! |
| Jan 4, 2022 | Sparse Bayesian Predictive Modelling of Tumor Response Using Radiomic Features with Shirin Golchi, my student Jingyan Fu, and others, accepted for pulication in Stat. |
| Nov 18, 2021 | Variable Selection in Regression-based Estimation of Dynamic Treatment Regimes by my PhD student Zeyu Bian accepted for pulication in Biometrics. https://doi.org/10.1111/biom.13608 |
| Jan 19, 2021 | New preprint on Variable Selection in Regression-based Estimation of Dynamic Treatment Regimes by my PhD student Zeyu Bian. https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07359 |
| Dec 18, 2020 | Dr. Richard Garfinkle successfully defended his PhD thesis. Congrats Dr. Dr. !! |
| Sep 24, 2020 | New preprint on Improving Convergence for Nonconvex Composite Programming by my PhD student Kai Yang. https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.10629 |
| Sep 23, 2020 | CIHR Project Grant on Evaluating the Trajectory of Aortic Stenosis (AS) in Quebec patients - Diagnosis, Treatments, and Outcomes awarded. Well done Jay! |
| Sep 22, 2020 | New preprint on an alternative framework for survival analysis using case-base sampling https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.10264 |
| Aug 31, 2020 | Congrats to Haoyu Wu for submitting her MSc Epidemiology thesis! She will beging her PhD in Biostatistics at McGill in Fall 2020 |
| Aug 5, 2020 | Congrats to Julien St-Pierre for passing his theory comprehensive exam. Bravo Julien! |
| Jul 10, 2020 | Our article titled Visualizing the Covid-19 pandemic with doubling rates published in Significance magazine. |
| May 4, 2020 |
Simultaneous SNP selection and adjustment for population structure in high dimensional prediction models pubished in PloS Genetics with accompanying R package ggmix available on CRAN.
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