Collaboration Policies | Procedures for Statisticians

The Department of Biostatistics has a collaboration protected time cost-sharing plan. This plan funds time for biostatisticians to be involved in developing research programs in other departments. The purpose of the plan is to avoid the common problem in biostatistics units in academic medical centers in which statisticians constantly get allocated to funded grants and have no time for working on new medical research opportunities other than renewals of existing grants. For a full-time faculty member specializing in a branch of medical research, this involves a department or division paying for 64% of the salary of a tenure-track PhD biostatistician to get 80% of their collaborative time. The Department pays 20% for pure methodologic research protected time and pays for 1/5 of the time devoted to the other department. Some support for an M.S.-level biostatistician, whose time we would pay 1/5, is also recommended. We would continue to do 1:4 matching of funds for the non-grant-funded portion of their time, which allows them to work in development of ideas and grants in the other department, as well as teach, work with journal clubs, assist with research conferences, etc. It is our hope that as biostatisticians get grant funded by the collaborating department that the amount of time allocated to research development remains somewhat constant. Click here for details about the program.

-- FrankHarrell - 21 May, 4 Nov 2004, 28 Oct 2005