As part of the CBHDS Spotlight Series, we’ll highlight some of the amazing work our team is accomplishing on a daily basis. We welcome you to Meet the Team, a peek behind the curtain at some of the team members and their stories.

Wenyan Ji’s path to biostatistics crossed multiple disciplines, and that’s just part of what makes her a standout member of the CBHDS team. With an early academic foundation in biochemical engineering, Wenyan spent several years in lab-based research before realizing that her real interest was health data science.

After earning her first master’s degree in China, she made her way to the US in 2014. That move triggered an academic refocus, where she discovered biostatistics. Inspired by colleagues in bioinformatics who used software to make quick, meaningful insights from data, Wenyan enrolled in her second master’s program at SUNY Buffalo, this time in biostatistics.

“I just felt like it's a super cool job working on a computer,” she said. “You have the software to help you to analyze things and you just to get the results very quickly. It looked super cool and I just wanted to dig into it more because I had no idea how they manipulate it.” 

From Buffalo, Wenyan moved on to a biostatistician role at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. There, she focused on oncology research and became fluent in survival analysis, statistical modeling, and collaborative science.

“My role at Roswell was great,” she shared. “A lot of what I do at CBHDS now is similar, but the methodologies and collaboration expanded.”

That diversity of subject matter is part of what makes her current role so rewarding.

“At CBHDS, we’re connected to Virginia Tech, so a lot of the work is research-driven,” she said. “We apply more advanced methods than I saw in industry. We get to explore new techniques.” 

Wenyan’s days are filled with collaboration across disciplines. She often supports researchers who are experts in their own domains but new to statistical thinking. It’s a great exchange that fuels her curiosity.

“When we work with collaborators, it’s not just about giving them answers,” Wenyan said. “They have their own deep knowledge, and we have ours. Over time, we meet in the middle.”

Wenyan’s experience working in industry had her acquainted with very large research teams. With CBHDS, she now sees that there is strengh even in smaller numbers.

“Our center is relatively small, but you got a lot of opportunities to talk with people in different areas, in different research fields,” she points out. “And you get the opportunities to learn more every time you meet with different collaborators.” 

Although Wenyan juggles multiple projects at once, it’s the ones that challenge her analytically that she remembers most.

“I don’t always remember the specific study,” she laughed. “But I remember the methods.”

Whether she’s helping shape methodologies or deep in R and SAS coding, Wenyan brings a thoughtful, precise approach to everything she does. And although she may have traded test tubes for scripts, the scientist in her never left.