Meet the Team

Tighiouart’s research entails developing safe and efficient Phase I/II cancer clinical trials for dose combinations of cytotoxic, immunotherapy and biologic agents, and analysis of PRO data using novel scores. He has led several research projects funded by the NCI including R01, U01, and PI/PD of several program projects and SPOREs.

Diniz’s experience and interests include applications of Bayesian analysis in medical research and regression models with focus on categorical and time-to-event responses. Ongoing projects include developing of time-to-event models, to dose combination of cytotoxic and biologic agents in Phase I clinical trials, and statistical software for EWOC.

Calsavara’s interests and experience are in developing methodological research focused on time-to-event response, as well as clinical trial design, protocol development and complex data analysis. Ongoing projects include development of predictive survival model to discontinuation in cancer clinical trial and long-term survivor models with a frailty term.

Bresee received her MS in biostatistics from UCLA and has extensive experience in clinical and preclinical research. Her current interests are in clinical trial design, protocol development and grant writing, as well as longitudinal data analysis. Bresee is the biostatistical reviewer for the Cedars-Sinai Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

Cook-Wiens’s experience includes longitudinal modeling, mixed models, and analysis of clinical trials and observational studies including crossover trials, survival analysis and propensity scoring. Current projects include working with women’s cardiology research, health services research, reviewing trials for the Cancer Center’s Data Safety and Monitoring Committee, and others.

Kim has been engaged in methodological research in early-phase cancer clinical trials and collaborative research with preclinical, clinical and public health investigators on statistical designs and analyses. Experiences include developing and validating prediction models and diagnostic tests, advanced survival analysis, longitudinal data analysis, propensity score analysis, meta analysis, among others.

Choi has collaborated with researchers from biomedical fields by providing services in study design and sample size calculation, to data analysis and results dissemination. She is currently working on projects with the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, Health Services Research, and other groups within Cedars-Sinai.

Lauzon serves as co‐director of the Introduction to Biostatistics and R course for the Cedars-Sinai MHDS Program. Her interests include survival analysis, regression modeling, power analysis, and statistical computing with SAS and R. She has worked on projects across various clinical fields including genomics, oncology, cardiology and emergency medicine.

Luu has trained in SAS, STATA and SPSS and his experience involves survival analysis, predictive modeling, machine learning and data visualizations, developing statistical data visualization tools using Shiny, and analysis of national inpatient databases such as the National Cancer Database, SEER, and SEER-Medicare from the National Cancer Institute.

Mirocha serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee/Institutional Review Board, and he currently co-teaches the MDHS Program. Interests include power analysis, propensity modeling, mixed and longitudinal modeling, and survival analysis. Ongoing projects are with Psychiatry, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pulmonary and Critical Care, Cardiology, Pathology, Transplant, and the Cancer Center.

Before joining Cedars-Sinai, Cui’s focus was on Phase I-III oncology trials focusing on clinical trials methodology, survival analysis, and R Shiny applications development. In his current role at Cedars-Sinai, Cui works with researchers from multiple medical fields to provide statistical consulting to study design and data analysis.