Minzhao Liu

Bio

Currently I am a Principal Statistician at PPD, Austin TX. I finished my Ph.D. (2014 Aug) in Statistics at University of Florida. I am also working as a research assistant for my advisor Dr. Mike Daniels at University of Texas at Austin. My research topic includes quantile regression in frequentist and Bayesian framework and methodology for (incomplete) longitudinal data. Previously, I worked as an intern for Educational Testing Service (ETS) supervised under Dr. Yi-Hsuan Lee and Dr. Alina von Davier. Before coming to US, I had a B.S. in Mathematics at Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

Projects

Patient Data Dashboard via R Shiny

link

Detection of Unusual Test Administrations Using a Linear Mixed Effects Model

This project is done during my internship in ETS during 2011 summer with Dr. Yi-Hsuan Lee and Dr. Alina von Davier. It was presented in International Meeting of the Psychometric Society IMPS 2012 conference in Lincoln, Nebraska and will appear as a chapter in the book, New Developments in Quantitative Psychology.

The project is to fit a mixed effects model based on a training dataset, find the relationship between test-takers’ scores and background, then predict the mean score of certain test administration to detect if there is any unusualness. R code

Bayesian Quantile Regression using Mixture of Polya Trees

In this paper, we adopt a mixture of Polya Tree prior for the regression error to nonparametrically capture the shape of error distribution, thus make inference for quantile regression parameters. It was presented in ENAR 2011 and will serve as a chapter in my PhD dissertation. Code can be found here. R package

Quantile Regression in the Presence of Monotone Missingness with Sensitivity Analysis

This paper develops new approach to fit quantile regression for longitudinal data with monotone missingness and how to do sensitivity analysis. R package

Publication

• Liu, M.; Daniels, MJ & Perri, M. (submitted) Quantile Regression in the Presence of Monotone Missingness with Sensitivity Analysis
• Waters, T.;Daniels, MJ; Bazzoli, GJ.; Perencevich, E.; Dunton, N.; Staggs, VS.; Potter, C.; Fareed, N.; Liu, M.; Shorr, RI. (submitted) Impact of Medicare’s Nonpayment for Hospital Acquired Conditions: Lessons for Future Policy
• Lee, Y.-H.; Liu, M. & Davier, A. (2013) Detection of Unusual Test Administrations Using a Linear Mixed Effects Model. In: New Developments in Quantitative Psychology, Springer New York, 2013, 66, 133-149. The authors contributed equally.
• Shorr, R. I.; Chandler, A. M.; Mion, L. C.; Waters, T. M.; Liu, M.; Daniels, M. J.; Kessler, L. A. & Miller, S. T. (2012) Effects of an Intervention to Increase Bed Alarm Use to Prevent Falls in Hospitalized Patients. A Cluster Randomized Trial. Annals of internal medicine, Am Coll Physicians, 2012, 157, 692-699
• Bouldin, E. L.; Andresen, E. M.; Dunton, N. E.; Simon, M.; Waters, T. M.; Liu, M.; Daniels, M. J.; Mion, L. C. & Shorr, R. I. Falls among adult patients hospitalized in the United States: Prevalence and trends. Journal of patient safety, LWW, 2013, 9, 13-17

My Interest

• Sports

  I am a big fan for all kinds of sports. I used to play basketball (guard) and soccer (right fullback) while I am in China. And I turned to love American football by inspiration from Tim Tebow and our Football team, Gators. Every Sunday morning, we play our regular flag football in Austin and I usually take wide receiver or running back. I like fishing also, but just a beginner. The biggest achievement while I was in Florida is four catfish in Lake Wauberg. And while I was traveling in Minnesota, I had a chance to ski. It is so fun but it seems little chance for me to practice since I usually stay in south.

• Coding

  I also like computer languages. I use R, SAS, Python and fortran for my research, and use Markdown, jekyll, zsh for my personal notes and host them on Github and bitbucket. I am also learning Android programming in order to build an app to make fun of my friend. Usually I learn languages on coursera and stackoverflow or by myself. (Stackoverflow is very addictive.) myprofile

  Currently the coding environment I am using is under OS X, Emacs and Zsh (not vi-hater). You can also find lots of emacs notes in this website.

• Game

  During my leisure time, I play computer games. I am a big fan of Blizzard. And the most recent game I am on is Hearthstone.

Background

I was born and raised in Shanghai, China, a beautiful and rapid developing city. Before coming to US, I studied Mathematics at Fudan University as undergraduate in Shanghai. For the first few years in US, I lived in Gainesville, FL beginning my PhD at University of Florida and I am very proud of being a Gator. Then in 2012, I moved to Austin, TX following my advisor, thus became a half Longhorn.

About This Site

This site is an experiment of blogging by combination of Jekyll, Markdown and Github pages. I blogged my notes of study, life and any other stuff, hosted them under Github and write as a hacker. As I am graduating in 2014 summer, I construct more on this site to give more information about myself.

Contact

• Email: liuminzhao@gmail.com

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