Carnegie Mellon University

Biography

Rebecca Doerge is the Glen de Vries Dean of the Mellon College of Science at Carnegie Mellon University and a member of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences' Department of Statistics and Data Science and the Mellon College of Science’s Department of Biological Sciences.

Doerge's research program focuses on statistical bioinformatics, an interdisciplinary component of bioinformatics that brings together many scientific disciplines for the purpose of asking, answering, and disseminating biologically interesting information in the quest to understand the ultimate function of DNA and epigenomic associations.

Doerge is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association (2007) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2007), and a Fellow of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (2009). She declined the American Council on Education Fellowship in 2016 to become dean of the Mellon College of Science. She is also chair-elect of the AAAS Statistics Section (2019); a member of the Board of Trustees for the National Institute of Statistical Sciences and the Mathematical Biosciences Institute; a member of the Engineering External Review Committee at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and a member of the Global Open-Source Breeding Informatics Initiative Advisory Board.

She has published two books and more than 120 scientific articles. She has mentored many students, including 24 doctoral students who have successfully defended their theses.

Doerge was born and raised in upstate New York. As a first generation student, she studied theoretical mathematics at the University of Utah. It was there that she gained interest and experience in both computing and human genetics. Doerge obtained her Ph.D. in statistics from North Carolina State University under the direction of Bruce Weir. She was a postdoctoral fellow with Gary Churchill at Cornell University, studying biometry and plant breeding.

Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon University, Doerge was the Trent and Judith Anderson Distinguished Professor of Statistics at Purdue University. She joined Purdue University in 1995 and held a joint appointment between the Colleges of Agriculture (Department of Agronomy) and Science (Department of Statistics). She was the recipient of Purdue’s Teaching for Tomorrow Award (1996), University Scholar Award (2001-06), and Provost's Award for Outstanding Graduate Faculty Mentor (2010).

B.S. in Mathematics, 1982-1986
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
M.Stat. in Mathematics, 1986-1988
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
Advisor: Simon Tavaré
Thesis: Information of Fixed Cluster Samples for Genetic Traits Involving Mixtures of Distributions
Ph.D. in Statistics, 1989-1993
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina
Minor in Genetics
Advisor: Bruce Weir
Dissertation: Statistical Methods for Locating Quantitative Trait Loci with Molecular Markers
Postdoctoral Fellow, 1993-1995
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Sponsor: Gary Churchill (Department of Plant Breeding and Biometry)
  • 8/1990-12/1992 - NSF Research Fellow
    North Carolina State University, Statistics Department
  • 12/1992-5/1993 - Research Assistant
    North Carolina State University, Statistics Department
  • 5/1993-7/1993 - Postdoctoral Associate
    North Carolina State University, Statistics Department: Dr. Bruce Weir
  • 8/1993-7/1995 - Instructor/Postdoctoral Associate
    Cornell University, Biometrics Unit: Dr. Gary Churchill
  • 8/1995-8/2000 - Assistant Professor of Statistics (75%) and Agronomy (25%)
    Purdue University
  • 8/2000-8/2003 - Associate Professor of Statistics and Agronomy
    Purdue University
  • 8/2003-8/2016 - Professor of Statistics and Agronomy
    Purdue University
  • 8/2008-7/2009 - Interim Head of Statistics
    Purdue University, Department of Statistics
  • 7/2009-6/2010 - Associate Head of Statistics
    Purdue University, Department of Statistics
  • 7/2010-6/2015 - Department Head of Statistics
    Purdue University, Department of Statistics
  • 10/2011-8/2016 - Trent and Judith Anderson Distinguished Professor of Statistics
  • 8/2016-Present - Dean of Mellon College of Science
    Carnegie Mellon University
  • 12/2017-Present - Glen de Vries Dean's Chair in the Mellon College of Science
Professor Doerge's research lies on the interdisciplinary boundaries of many fields (Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, Biological and Plant Sciences, Genomics and Epigenomics) that are currently involved in assessing genomic based questions. Statistical Bioinformatics brings together many scientific disciplines to ask, answer, and disseminate biologically interesting information in the quest to understand the ultimate function and control of DNA. Her research program encompasses four broad areas as applied to both diploids and polyploids: the development of statistical methodology for quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping and transcriptomics (microarrays, next-generation sequencing, single-cell); the analysis of genetic mapping and (expression) QTL experimental data; the analysis of the epigenome; and the development of methodology to combine data and/or results from genomic and epigenomic investigations.  Since relocating to Carnegie Mellon University, Professor Doerge is working with the Robotics Institute on genomic/genetics applications in Agriculture.
  • 1990-1993 NSF Fellowship in Mathematics and Molecular Biology (UC Berkeley)
  • 1990-1992 Gertrude Cox Fellowship (NC State University)
  • 1991 Mu Sigma Rho membership (NC State University)
  • 1992 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory award to attend Molecular Markers for Plant Breeding
  • 1994 Instit. for Math. and its Appl. award to attend the Mol. Bio. program (Univ. MN)
  • 1996 Teaching for Tomorrow Award (Purdue University)
  • 1997 Outstanding Asst Prof. for Excellence in Teaching and Research (Science, Purdue)
  • 1998 Outstanding Teacher of Undergrads, School of Science (Purdue University)
  • 1998-1999 Who's Who Among America's Teachers (student nominated, Purdue University)
  • 2001 Elected Member Gamma Sigma Delta
  • 2002 James Madison University Visiting Scholar
  • 2001-2006 University Scholar (Purdue University)
  • 2007 College of Science Graduate Student Mentoring Award (Purdue University)
  • 2007 Elected Member Sigma Xi
  • 2007 Elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association
  • 2007 Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
  • 2009 Fellow, Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC)
  • 2010 Provost's Award for Outstanding Graduate Faculty Mentor (Purdue University)
  • 2011 Trent and Judith Anderson Distinguished Professor of Statistics (Purdue University)
  • 2015 College of Science Leadership Award (Purdue University)
  • 2017 Glen de Vries Dean’s Chair in the Mellon College of Science (Carnegie Mellon University)

See all of Dean Rebecca Doerge's publications at  Google Scholar Citation List

  1. Dr. Brian Munneke: August 2001. Null model methods for cluster analysis of gene expression data. Current position: Senior Biostatistician; Genomic Health, Redwood City, CA, USA. 

  2. Dr. Jayson Wilbur: (co-advised with Jayanta Ghosh) December 2001. Variable selection in high-dimensional multivariate binary data. Current position: Senior Scientist; Metrum Research Group, Tariffville, CT, USA. 

  3. Dr. Michael Black: August 2002. Statistical issues in the design and analysis of spotted microarray experiments. Current position: Associate Professor (equivalent to Full Professor in US); Department of Biochemistry, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. 

  4. Dr. Dachuang Cao: (co-advised with Bruce Craig) May 2004. Quantitative trait locus mapping in polyploids. Current position: Research Scientist; Division of Statistics, Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, IN, USA. 

  5. Dr. Hongmei Jiang: December 2004. A two-step procedure for multiple pairwise comparisons in microarray experiments. Current position: Associate Professor; Department of Statistics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA. 

  6. Dr. John Stevens: May 2005. Meta-analytic approaches for microarray data. Current position: Associate Professor; Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA. 

  7. Dr. Lianbo Yu: May 2006. Statistical issues in protein microarray analysis. Current position: Biostatistical Scientist; Center for Biostatistics, College of Medicine, and Research Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. 

  8. Dr. Martina Muehlbach Bremer: December 2006. Identifying regulated genes through the correlation structure of time dependent microarray data. Current position: Associate Professor; Department of Mathematics, San Jose State University, San Jose’, CA, USA. 

  9. Dr. Kyunga Kim: May 2007. Statistical issues in mapping genetic determinants for expression level polymorphisms. Current position: Assistant Professor; Department of Statistics, Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul, South Korea. 

  10. Dr. Riyan Cheng (co-advised with Jun Xie): December 2007. Statistical methods for mapping multiple complex traits. Current position: Research Fellow, Justin Borevitz Lab; Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Acton, Australia. 

  11. Dr. Lingling An: August 2008. Dynamic clustering of time series gene expression. Current position: Assoc. Professor; Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering; University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA. 

  12. Dr. Suk-Young Yoo: December 2008. Statistical methods for integrating epigenomic results. Current position: Research Statistical Analyst; MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA. 

  13. Dr. Cherie Ochsenfeld (co-advised with Kristopher Jennings): August 2009. Mixed models in quantitative trait loci and association mapping with bootstrap thresholds. Current position: Statistical Geneticist; Dow AgroSciences, Indianapolis, IN, USA. 

  14. Dr. Alexander Lipka (co-advised with George McCabe): December 2009. Associating single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with binary traits. Current position: Assistant Professor; Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana, Urbana, IL, USA. 

  15. Dr. Gayla Hobbs Olbricht (co-advised with Bruce Craig): August 2010. Incorporating genome annotation in the statistical analysis of genomic and epigenomic tiling array data. Current position: Assistant Professor; Department of Mathematics, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Ralla, MO, USA. 

  16. Dr. Andrea Rau: August 2010. Reverse engineering gene networks using genomic time-course data. Current position: Assistant Professor; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (GABI / PSGen) Domaine de Vilver, Jouy-en-Josas, France. 

  17. Dr. Paul Livermore Auer: August 2010. Statistical design and analysis of next-generation sequencing data. Current position: Assistant Professor; Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA. 

  18. Dr. Tilman Achberger: May 2011. Selecting subsets of traits for quantitative trait loci analysis. Current position: Statistician; Google Inc. World Headquarters, Mountain View, CA, USA. 

  19. Dr. Douglas Baumann: December 2012. Annotation-informed integration of omic data in next-generation sequencing. Current position: Assistant Professor; University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, La Crosse, WI, USA. 

  20. Dr. Xiongzhi (Chee) Chen: December 2012. General methods for adaptive control and estimation of false discovery rate. Current position: Postdoctoral Fellow, John Storey Lab; The Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. 

  21. Dr. Sanvesh Srivastava: August 2013. Hierarchical Bayesian modeling strategies for analyzing high-dimensional data. Current position: Assistant Professor; Department of Statistics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA. 

  22. Dr. Ani Elias (Agronomy; co-advised with Mitch Tuinstra): August 2013. Understanding environmental variables influencing hybrid maize performance across the United States corn belt. Current position: Research Scientist; Monsanto, Saint Louis, MO, USA. 

  23. Dr. Jeremiah Rounds: August 2015. Inference using multi-level genomic features sets and models in RNA-seq experiments. Current position: Applied Statistics & Computational Modeling Group; Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, National Security Directorate.
  24. Ms. Faye Zheng: 2016. The Design and Analysis of Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing Experiments.  Current position: Program Director, Insight Data Science. Boston, MA, USA).
  25. Mr. Patrick Medina: 2017.  WaveTDA: Bayesian Statistics, Wavelets and Topological Data Analysis to Assess Statistical Shape.  Current position: Machine Learning Engineer. Electromagnetic Systems, Inc. (EMSI), El Segundo, CA, USA).
  26. Mr. Emery Goossens: 2018.  Deep Learning and Computational Algorithms in Large-scale Omics Applications.