Marina Vannucci

Professor of Statistics

Co-Director, Joint MDA-RICE Graduate Program in Biostatistics

About me

• 1992 B.S. math; 1996 Ph.D. stat, University of Florence, Italy

• 1996-1998 University of Kent at Canterbury, UK

• 1998-2007 Texas A&M University

• At Rice University since 2007

Research Interests

• Theory and Methods:

Bayesian modeling

Variable selection

Nonparametric functional estimation

Wavelet-based statistical models

Statistical computing

• Applications:

Bioinformatics, chemometrics and engineering

funding from NSF and NIH

Bioinformatics• Models for high-dimensional data • DNA microarrays and mass spectrometry data• Data integration (i.e., gene expressions and

sequence data) • Modeling of torsion angles for protein structure

prediction (structural bioinformatics)• Collaborations with faculty at the Texas Children

Hospital (TCH), with Dr. Guerra and Dr. Kimmel• MD Anderson faculty (P. Mueller and K.A. Do)

Functional Data• Biomedical data• Nonparametric modeling (wavelets)• Bayesian modeling• Collaboration with Dr. Cox on fluorescence spectroscopy

for cervical pre-cancer detection• MD Anderson faculty (J. Morris on colon carcinogenesis)

Students• I have advised 9 Ph.D. students, 3 Master students and

4 postdocs

University of Texas at El PasoUniversity of MichiganGeorgetown UniversityBoise State UniversityIndiana UniversityMD Anderson Cancer CenterMoffit Cancer Center, Florida N.S. Kline Research Institute, NY National Research Institute, ItalyNational Cancer Center, Korea National Institute of Health (NIH)

• Currently mentoring: Colleen Kenney,Terrance Savitsky, Francesco Stingo, Alejandro Villagran-Hernandez