Marinela Capanu, PhD

Assistant Attending Biostatistician
Office Phone:
646-735-8120
Education:
University of Florida

Current Research Interests

Dr. Capanu's current research interests are in the development of hierarchical models for epidemiologic studies to identify genetic variants that increase the risk of cancer. She has been awarded an NCI R01 grant to determine the validity of available hierarchical modeling techniques for estimating the relative risks of individual rare genetic variants. The goal of the study is to provide a valid analytic strategy that can distinguish variants that are harmful from those that are harmless, thus facilitating genetic counseling. Dr. Capanu is also involved in the statistical analysis of the WECARE (Women's Environment Cancer and Radiation Exposure) Study. In collaboration with Dr. Bernstein, Dr. Capanu is conducting the analysis of the WECARE GWA Study to discover novel SNPs implicated in the development of second breast cancer. Dr. Capanu is also involved in clinical collaborations with the Gastrointestinal Oncology Service. She has been working with investigators of this group on the design and analysis of prospective and retrospective studies.

Mutations that cause cancer: A Q&A session with Drs. Marinela Capanu and Colin Begg

Publications by Marinela Capanu

Selected Bibliography

  1. Booth, J., Capanu, M., Heigenhauser, L. (2005) Exact conditional p-value calculation for the quasi-symmetry model, Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, Vol. 14, No. 3, September 2005 pp.716-725
  2. Capanu, M., Jones, G. A., Randles, R. H. (2006) Testing for Preference using a Sum of Wilcoxon Signed Rank Statistics Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, Nov 15 51(2):793-796
  3. Capanu, M., Presnell, B. (2007) Misspecification Tests for Binomial and Beta-Binomial Models, Statistics in Medicine, 27(14):2536-2554
  4. Capanu, M., Orlow, I., Berwick, M., Hummer, A. J., Thomas, D. C., Begg, C. B. (2008) The Use of Hierarchical Models for Estimating Relative Risks of Individual Genetic Variants: An Application to a Study of Melanoma, Statistics in Medicine, 27(11):1973-1992
  5. Capanu M, Begg CB (2010) Hierarchical Modeling for Estimating Relative Risks of Rare Genetic Variants: Properties of the Pseudo-Likelihood Method. Biometrics. Aug 5 [EPUB ahead of print]