Ph.D. (1997) Harvard University

Sally W. Thurston Associate Professor of Biostatistics Associate Professor of Oncology     Contact Information: University of Rochester Dept of Biostatistics and Computational Biology 601 Elmwood Avenue Box 630 Rochester, New York 14642   Office: MRBX G-11311E Phone: (585) 275-2406 Fax: (585) 273-1031 E-mail: Thurston@bst.rochester.edu

Research Interests

Much of my statistical research is motivated by problems arising in environmental and occupational health. Research interests include modeling multiple outcomes, correction for measurement error bias, exposure assessment, modeling multiple correlated exposures, non-parametric smoothing, Bayesian inference, informative prior specification, and using biomarkers to improve cancer risk estimates.

I am currently the director of the Design, Biostatistics, and Clinical Research Ethics key function of Rochester's Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/ctsi/overview/index.cfm), and am the Biostatistics Core leader for the Center for Biophysical Assessment and Risk Management Following Irradiation (http://radonc.urmc.rochester.edu/U19/u19homepage.html). I am a member of Rochester's Environmental Health Sciences Center (http://www2.envmed.rochester.edu/envmed/EHSC/index.html), and collaborate closely with several faculty in Environmental Medicine including as a lead statistician for the Seychelles Child Development Study.

I received an A.B. in Biology from Oberlin College, an M.S. in Natural Resources from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in Statistics from Harvard University. Prior to coming to Rochester in 2002, I was a postdoctoral fellow and then a research associate in Biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health. I am a member of the American Statistical Association, the International Biometric Society, the American Association for Cancer Research, and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute.

Selected Publications

• Wiencke JK, Thurston SW, Kelsey KT, Varkonyi A, Wain JC, Mark EJ, and Christiani DC (1999). Early Age at Smoking Initiation and Tobacco Carcinogen DNA Damage in the Lung. Journal of the National Cancer Institute 91:614-619.
• Thurston SW, Ryan L, Christiani DC, Snow R, Carlson J, You L, Cui S, Ma G, Wang L, Huang Y, and Xu X. (2000). Petrochemical Exposure and Menstrual Disturbances. American Journal of Industrial Medicine 38:555-564.
• Thurston SW, Wand MP, and Wiencke JK (2000). Negative Binomial Additive Models. Biometrics 56:139-144.
• Zhou W, Thurston SW, Liu G, Xu L-L, Miller DP, Wain JC, Lynch TJ, Su L, and Christiani DC (2001). The Interaction between Microsomal Epoxide Hydrolase Polymorphisms and Cumulative Cigarette Smoking in Different Histological Subtypes of Lung Cancer. Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention 10:461-466.
• Thurston SW (2001). DNA adducts. In: El-Shaarawi AH and Piegorsch WW editors, Encyclopedia of Environmetrics, John Wiley and Sons, England, Vol 1:561-562.
• Thurston SW (2001). Biomarkers. In: El-Shaarawi AH and Piegorsch WW editors, Encyclopedia of Environmetrics, John Wiley and Sons, England, Vol 1:192-196.
• Zhou W, Liu G, Thurston SW, Xu LL, Miller DP, Wain JC, Lynch TJ, Su L, and Christiani DC (2002). Genetic Polymorphisms of N-acetyltranferase-2 and Microsomal Epoxide Hydrolase and Cumulative Cigarette Smoking in Lung Cancer. Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention 11: 15-21.
• Zhou W, Liu G, Miller DP, Thurston SW, Xu LL, Wain JC, Lynch TJ, Su L, and Christiani DC (2002). Gene-environment interaction for the ERCC2 polymorphisms and cumulative cigarette smoking exposure in lung cancer. Cancer Research 62:1377-1381.
• Thurston SW, Eisen EA, and Schwartz J. (2002). Smoothing in Survival Models, Applied to Workers Exposed to Several Metalworking Fluids. Epidemiology 13:685-692.
• Thurston SW, Spiegelman D, and Ruppert D. (2003). Equivalence of regression calibration methods in main study / external validation study designs. Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference 113:527-539.
• Ryan L, Huang W, Thurston SW, Kelsey KT, Wiencke JK, and Christiani DC (2004). On the use of biomarkers for environmental health research. Statistical Methods in Medical Research 13:1-19.
• Eisen EA, Agalliu I, Thurston SW, Coull BA, Checkoway H (2004). Smoothing methods applied to occupational cohort studies: illustrated by penalized splines. Occupational & Environmental Medicine 61(10):854-60.
• Thurston SW, Williams PL, Hauser R, Hu H, Hernandez-Avila M, and Spiegelman D (2005). A comparison of regression calibration approaches for designs with internal validation data. Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference 131:175-190.
• Thurston SW, Liu G, Miller DP, and Christiani DC (2005). Modeling lung cancer risk in case-control studies using a new dose metric of smoking. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention 14:2296-2302 (with commentary).
• Govindarajulu US, Spiegelman D, Thurston SW, Ganguli B, Eisen EA (2007). Comparing smoothing techniques in Cox models for exposure-response relationships. Statistics in Medicine 26:3735-3752.
• Stokes-Riner A, Thurston SW, Brazil C, Guzick D. Liu F, Overstreet JW, Wang C, Sparks A, Redmon JB, Swan SH (2007). One semen sample or two? Insights from a study of fertile men. Journal of Andrology 28:638-643.
• Thurston SW, Bovet P, Myers GJ, Davidson PW, Georger LA, Shamlaye C, Clarkson TW (2007). Does prenatal methylmercury exposure from fish consumption affect blood pressure in childhood? NeuroToxicology 28:924-930.
• Elder A, Yang H, Gwiazda R, Teng X, Thurston S, He H, Oberdorster G (2007). Testing nanomaterials of unknown toxicity: an example based on platinum nanoparticles of different shapes. Advanced Materials 19:3124-3129.
• Huang LS, Myers GJ, Davidson PW, Cox C, Xiao F, Thurston SW, Cernichiari E, Shamlaye CF, Sloane-Reeves J, Georger L, Clarkson TW (2007). Is susceptibility to prenatal methylmercury exposure from fish consumption non-homogeneous? Tree-structured analysis for the Seychelles Child Development Study. NeuroToxicology 28:1237-1244.
• Liang H, Thurston SW, Ruppert D, Apanasovich T, Hauser R. (2008). Additive Partial Linear Models with Measurement Error. Biometrika 95:667-678.
• Davidson PW, Strain JJ, Myers GJ, Thurston SW, Bonham MP, Shamlaye CF, Stokes-Riner A, Wallace JMW, Robson PJ, Duffy EM, Georger LA, Sloane-Reeves J, Cernichiari E, Canfield RL, Cox C, Huang LS, Janciuras J, Clarkson TW (2008). Neurodevelopmental effects of maternal nutritional status and exposure to methylmercury from eating fish during pregnancy. NeuroToxicology 29:767-775.
• Strain JJ, Davidson PW, Bonham MP, Duffy EM, Stokes-Riner A, Thurston SW, Wallace JMW, Robson PJ, Shamlaye CF, Georger LA, Sloane-Reeves J, Cernichiari E, Canfield RL, Cox C, Huang LS, Janciuras J, Myers GJ, and Clarkson TW (2008). Associations of maternal long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, methyl mercury, and infant development in the Seychelles Child Development and Nutrition Study. NeuroToxicology 29:776-782.
• Thurston SW, Ruppert D, and Davidson PW (2008). Bayesian models for multiple outcomes nested in domains. Biometrics, to appear.
• Liang H, Su H, Thurston SW, Meeker JD, and Hauser R (2009). Empirical Likelihood based Inference for Additive Partial Linear Measurement Error Models. Statistics and its Interface, to appear.