Missing Data:

Adriana Pérez, Ph.D., assistant professor of biostatistics,
School of Public Health Brownsville Regional Campus

Adriana Pérez, Ph.D.

Pérez’s expertise is crucial for health and medical research. Her research spans diverse areas such as stomach cancer, intensive care, asthma and depression.

As a biostatistician, Pérez specializes in methods to handle missing data, determining sample size and developing modelling strategies for health-related studies. For instance, respondents often refuse to answer a question on a survey or miss a visit in a clinical trial. Research in medicine, public health, survey or census always has missing data.

“Trying to obtain the true information from any research, while accounting for the uncertainty due to those missing values, is my area of interest,” she said. She currently is working collaboratively on several projects funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense to study diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and tuberculosis along the Texas-Mexico border.

“I got interested in biostatistics during my college training as a statistician when I heard about the design of experiments for detecting which fertilizers work better in the National Center for Coffee Research in Colombia, South America,” she said.

“The design and analysis of any research is equally as important as collecting project information,” Pérez said. “Its significance has long-term implications across our country. By focusing on biostatistics, I can help improve the decisions regarding methods, technologies, drugs, prescriptions and the well-being of our people in this world.”