Simina Maria Boca Department of Biostatistics · Bloomberg School of Public Health · Johns Hopkins University
genomics@biostat
Center for Computational Genomics

  Welcome | Curriculum vitae | Software | Course schedule | Teaching | Resources | Contact |

  Education | Experience | Honors and Awards | Publications | Presentations | Service | Professional Memberships | Programming Languages and Statistical Packages |

Education

Ph.D. in Biostatistics,
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH)
    Thesis: "Interpretable Set Analysis for High-Dimensional Data"
    Advisors: Giovanni Parmigiani and Jeffrey T. Leek 		2006-2011
M.H.S. in Bioinformatics,
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH)
    Advisor: Jeffrey T. Leek 		2009-2011
B.S. in Mathematics (with a minor in History), summa cum laude,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)		 2003-2006

Experience

Postdoctoral Fellow
Biostatistics Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics,
National Cancer Institute 		2011-Present
Research Assistant
Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins 		2007-2011
Teaching Assistant
Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health 		2007-2011
Research Aide
Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory 		Summer 2006,
Summer 2005

Honors and Awards

Margaret Merrell Award for outstanding research by a Biostatistics doctoral student (JHSPH) 2011
Predoctoral Training Program in Biostatistics for Genetics and Genomics (JHSPH) 2006-2008,
2009-2011
Biostatistics/Mental Health Psychiatry Training Program (JHSPH) 2008-2009
Johns Hopkins Sommer Scholar (JHSPH) 2006-2011
GlaxoSmithKline Scholar Award
for outstanding performance on the Biostatistics Ph.D. first-year comprehensive exam (JHSPH)		 2007
Phi Beta Kappa 2006
H. Roy Brahana Prize in Mathematics
for the graduating senior with the most exceptional undergraduate career (UIUC) 		2006
Elizabeth R. Bennett Scholarship in Mathematics
given to a sophomore or junior, based on GPA and strength of coursework (UIUC) 		2005

Publications

    Journal Articles

  1. Boca SM, Rosenberg NA. Mathematical properties of Fst between admixed populations and their parental source populations. Theoretical Population Biology, 2011, 80(3):208-216. [full text].

  2. Parsons DW, Li M, Zhang X, Jones S, Leary RJ, Lin J, Boca SM, Carter H, Samayoa J, Bettegowda C, Gallia GL, Jallo GI, Binder ZA, Nikolsky Y, Hartigan J, Smith DR, Gerhard DS, Fults DW, VandenBerg S, Berger MS, Marie SKN, Shinjo SMO, Clara C, Phillips PC, Minturn JE, Biegel JA, Judkins AR, Resnick AC, Storm PB, Curran T, He Y, Rasheed BA, Friedman HS, Keir ST, McLendon R, Northcott PA, Taylor MD, Burger PC, Riggins GJ, Karchin R, Parmigiani G, Bigner DD, Yan H, Papadopoulos N, Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, Velculescu VE. The genetic landscape of the childhood cancer medulloblastoma. Science, 2011, 331(6016):435-439. [full text]

  3. Boca SM, Kinzler KW, Velculescu VE, Vogelstein B, and Parmigiani G. Patient-oriented gene set analysis for cancer mutation data. Genome Biology, 2010, 11: R112. [full text]

  4. Schroeder KB, Jakobsson M, Crawford MH, Schurr TG, Boca SM, Conrad DF, Tito RY, Osipova LP, Tarskaia LA, Zhadanov SI, Wall JD, Pritchard JK, Malhi RS, Smith DG, Rosenberg NA. Haplotypic background of a private allele at high frequency in the Americas. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2009, 26(5):995-1016. [full text]

  5. Parmigiani G, Boca S, Lin J, Kinzler KW, Velculescu V, Vogelstein B. Design and analysis issues in genome-wide somatic mutation studies of cancer. Genomics, 2009, 93(1):17-21. [full text]

  6. Leary RJ, Lin JC, Cummins J, Boca S, Wood LD, Parsons DW, Jones S, Sjoeblom T, Park BH, Parsons R, Willis J, Dawson D, Wilson JK, Nikolskaya T, Nikolsky Y, Kopelovich L, Papadopoulos N, Pennacchio LA, Wang TL, Markowitz SD, Parmigiani G, Kinzler KW, Vogelstein B, Velculescu VE. Integrated analysis of homozygous deletions, focal amplifications, and sequence alterations in breast and colorectal cancers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2008, 105(42):16224-16229. [full text]

  7. Wood LD, Parsons W, Jones S, Lin J, Sjoblom T, Leary RJ, Shen D, Boca SM, Barber T, Ptak J, Silliman N, Szabo S, Dezso Z, Ustyanksky V, Nikolskaya T, Nikolsky Y, Karchin R, Wilson PA, Kaminker JS, Zhang Z, Croshaw R, Willis J, Dawson D, Shipitsin M, Willson JKW, Sukumar S, Polyak C, Park BH, Pethiyagoda CL, Pant PVK, Ballinger DG, Sparks AB, Hartigan J, Smith DR, Suh E, Papadopoulos N, Buckhaults P, Markowitz SD, Parmigiani G, Kinzler KW, Velculescu VE, Vogelstein B. The genomic landscapes of human breast and colorectal cancers. Science, 2007, 318(5853):1108-1113. [full text]

  8. Wang M, Boca SM, Kalelkar R, Mittenthal JE, Caetano-Anolles G. A phylogenomic reconstruction of the protein world based on a genomic census of protein fold architecture. Complexity, 2006, 12: 27-40. [full text]

    9. Technical comments

  9. Parmigiani G, Lin J, Boca SM, Sjoblom T, Jones S, Wood LD, Parsons DW, Barber T, Buckhaults P, Markowitz SD, Park BH, Bachman KE, Papadopoulos N, Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, Velculescu VE. Response to Comments on "The consensus coding sequences of human breast and colorectal cancers". Science, 2007: 317(5844):1500. [full text]

    10. Working papers

  10. Boca SM, Corrada Bravo H, Caffo B, Leek JT, and Parmigiani G. "A decision-theory approach to interpretable set analysis for high-dimensional data." JHU Biostat Working Paper 211, 2010. [full text]

Presentations

(selected)

Talks

"A decision-theory approach to interpretable set analysis for high-dimensional data." ENAR Spring Meeting (invited session). March 21, 2011. Miami, FL.

"Approaches to interpretable gene-set analysis." Biostatistics and Computational Biology Seminar, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. April 29, 2010. Boston, MA.

Posters

"A decision-theory approach to interpretable set analysis for high-dimensional data." Young Investigator Symposium on Genomics and Bioinformatics, Johns Hopkins University. September 23, 2010. Baltimore, MD.

"A decision-theory approach to interpretable set analysis for high-dimensional data." Joint Statistical Meetings. August 3, 2010. Vancouver, BC, Canada.

"Patient-oriented gene-set analysis in cancer mutation data." Innovation and Inventiveness: Statistical workshop at Yale in honor of John Hartigan. May 15, 2009. New Haven, CT.

Service

Reviewer for Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology and BMC Bioinformatics
Student representative to Department of Biostatistics faculty meetings. 2009-2010
Presenter/panelist during the Student Recruitment Weekend. 2008, 2009, 2011
Coordinator of Departmental Post-Seminar Discussions ("Tea Time"). 2008-2009

Professional Memberships

Programming Languages and Statistical Packages

R, Perl, STATA, C, SAS.