Biography

¡Hola! My name is Jesus and my pronouns are he/him/his (learn why is this important). I’m a Ph.D. candidate in Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and I work under the direction of Dr. Tanya P. Garcia. I’m currently the MIND Lab facilitator, where we explore estimators from the missing data literature and define ways in which these must be adapted for other types of incomplete data — such as right-censored covariates.

Research

My dissertation, “Advancing Huntington Disease Modeling: Robust and Efficient Solutions for Right‐Censored Covariates”, tackles the challenge of linear regression with a right-censored covariate by adapting existing missing data estimators and developing new techniques. My work aims to improve the understanding of the symptom progression of neurodegenerative diseases like Huntington.

The first paper of my disseration is called “Establishing the Parallels and Differences Between Right-Censored and Missing Covariates”. In this paper we adapt various missing covariate estimators for the right-censored covariate problem in the unexplored area of informative covariate right-censoring. For an R-code tutorial, please visit link. I will be submitting my dissertation chapters for publication over the next few months, so I encourage you to stay tuned for updates!