Nilanjan Chatterjee is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of

Biostatistics Biostatistics (also known as biometry) are the development and application of statistical methods to a wide range of topics in biology. It encompasses the design of biological experiments, the collection and analysis of data from those experime ...

and

Genetic Epidemiology Genetic epidemiology is the study of the role of genetic factors in determining health and disease in families and in populations, and the interplay of such genetic factors with environmental factors. Genetic epidemiology seeks to derive a statist ...

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

, with appointments in the Department of Biostatistics in the

Bloomberg School of Public Health Bloomberg may refer to: People * Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer * Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian * Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician and m ...

and in the Department of Oncology in the

Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University is an NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in Baltimore, MD. It was established in 1973 and received its NCI designation that same year as one of the first designated ca ...

in the

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) is the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1893, the School of Medicine shares a campus with the Johns Hopkins Hospi ...

.Messersmith, Juli
"Nilanjan Chatterjee named Bloomberg Distinguished Professor"
''JHU Hub'', Baltimore, 11 November 2015. Retrieved on 11 November 2015. He was formerly the chief of the Biostatistics Branch of the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics.

Biography

Chatterjee was born in Kolkata, India, to parents Aditya Nath and Pranati Chatterjee. He attended Ballygunge Government High School and Saint Xavier's College. He received his bachelor's degree in statistics from the

Indian Statistical Institute Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a higher education and research institute which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta C ...

in 1993, and his master's in 1995. Chatterjee earned his PhD in Statistics from the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

, Seattle in 1999. His PhD thesis, titled "Semiparametric Inference Based on Estimating Equations in Regression Models for Two-Phase Outcome-Dependent Sampling," was advised by Norman Breslow and Jon A. Wellner. Chatterjee joined the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as a postdoctoral fellow in the biostatistics branch of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG) in 1999, and became a tenure-track investigator in 2001 and a senior investigator in 2004. He served as chief of the biostatistics branch from 2008 until 2015. He remains a Special Volunteer at the NCI.

Research

Chatterjee is known for his work in

quantitative genetics Quantitative genetics deals with phenotypes that vary continuously (such as height or mass)—as opposed to discretely identifiable phenotypes and gene-products (such as eye-colour, or the presence of a particular biochemical). Both branches u ...

cancer research Cancer research is research into cancer to identify causes and develop strategies for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and cure. Cancer research ranges from epidemiology, molecular bioscience to the performance of clinical trials to evaluate and ...

big data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...

statistical Statistics (from German: ''Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industria ...

methodology In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for bri ...

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

, gene-environment interaction,

genetic association Genetic association is when one or more genotypes within a population co-occur with a phenotypic trait more often than would be expected by chance occurrence. Studies of genetic association aim to test whether single-locus alleles or genotype fre ...

and

genome-wide association studies In genomics, a genome-wide association study (GWA study, or GWAS), also known as whole genome association study (WGA study, or WGAS), is an observational study of a genome-wide set of genetic variants in different individuals to see if any varia ...

. Chatterjee developed a model for predicting breast cancer risk that combines individual-level data on risk factors such as smoking and age with genetic variations associated with higher risk of breast cancer. He led a large collaboration of experts from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the

Whiting School of Engineering The G.W.C. Whiting School of Engineering is the engineering college of the Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. History Engineering at Johns Hopkins was originally created in 1913 as an educational p ...

that used

and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

to develop tools for autism risk prediction and intervention. Chatterjee has participated in the Johns Hopkins Individualized Health Initiative (Hopkins inHealth), which aims to improve individual and population health outcomes through innovative collaborations among experts in biomedical and data science. Chatterjee's contributions to the initiative involved research on using genetic markers for risk prediction models as well as their applications to personalized medicine and public health interventions. Through his quantitative studies of gene-environment and gene-gene interactions, Chatterjee has also made fundamental contributions to theoretical and methodological approaches in epidemiology and biostatistics. Using statistics from

to appraise the number of DNA variations that contribute to different physical traits and diseases, Chatterjee and colleagues developed a method for estimating the number of individual samples needed in order to identify genetic bases of traits, such as height or body mass index (BMI), or diseases, such as

diabetes Diabetes, also known as diabetes mellitus, is a group of metabolic disorders characterized by a high blood sugar level ( hyperglycemia) over a prolonged period of time. Symptoms often include frequent urination, increased thirst and increased ap ...

bipolar disorder Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...

. This method can be used for designing genetic studies and understanding genetic risk prediction.

Awards

*Fellow of the

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest continuousl ...

(2008) * Mortimer Spiegelman Award (2010) * George W. Snedecor Award (2011) *

COPSS Presidents' Award The COPSS Presidents' Award is given annually by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies to a young statistician in recognition of outstanding contributions to the profession of statistics. The COPSS Presidents' Award is generally ...

(2011) *Gertrude Cox Award (2011) *Elected Member of the American Epidemiologic Society (2012)

Publications

Chatterjee has more than 40,000 citations in Google Scholar and an h-index of 98.
Pubmed citations

Google Scholar citations
Highly Cited Articles (''more than 1000 citations'') * 2010 with EK Speliotes, CJ Willer, SI Berndt, KL Monda, G Thorleifsson, AU Jackson, et al, ''Association analyses of 249,796 individuals reveal 18 new loci associated with body mass index'', in: ''

Nature Genetics ''Nature Genetics'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Nature Portfolio. It was established in 1992. It covers research in genetics. The chief editor is Tiago Faial. The journal encompasses genetic and functional genomic studi ...

. Vol. 42, nº 11; 937-948.'' * 2010 with HL Allen, K Estrada, G Lettre, SI Bernd, MN Weedon, F Rivadeneira, et al, ''Hundreds of variants clustered in genomic loci and biological pathways affect human height'', in: ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

''. Vol. 467, ''nº 7317; 832-838.'' * 2007 with DJ Hunter, P Kraft, KB Jacobs, DG Cox, M Yeager, SE Hankinson, ''A genome-wide association study identifies alleles in FGFR2 associated with risk of sporadic postmenopausal breast cancer'', in: ''Nature Genetics''. Vol. 39, ''nº 7; 870-874.'' * 2007 with M Yeager, N Orr, RB Hayes, KB Jacobs, P Kraft, S Wacholder, et al, ''Genome-wide association study of prostate cancer identifies a second risk locus at 8q24'', in: ''Nature Genetics''. Vol. 39, ''nº 5; 645-649.'' * 2008 with G Thomas, KB Jacobs, M Yeager, P Kraft, S Wacholder, N Orr, K Yu, et al, ''Multiple loci identified in a genome-wide association study of prostate cancer'', in: ''Nature Genetics''. Vol. 40, ''nº 3; 310-315.''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chatterjee, Nilanjan Year of birth missing (living people) 1970s births Living people Indian Statistical Institute alumni University of Washington alumni Indian statisticians Biostatisticians Johns Hopkins University faculty National Institutes of Health people 20th-century Indian mathematicians Fellows of the American Statistical Association Scientists from Kolkata