Dr. Mentch Receives Two Large Federal Awards from NSF and NIH

Dr. Lucas Mentch recently received two large federal awards, one from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the other from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NSF award will allow Dr. Mentch to continue his work on developing statistical inference methodology in the context of machine learning ensembles. This provides a means for researchers and practitioners to use familiar means of quantifying uncertainty (e.g. confidence intervals and hypothesis tests) in what is traditionally considered a black-box setting where results are difficult to interpret. The NIH award will support a joint effort between Pitt, Harvard, and the University of North Carolina to provide personalized treatment recommendations to individuals with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs). Information from patient surveys and mobile health data collected through wearable devices will be combined in order to model disease progression and both patient and physician-facing software will be developed to allow both parties to explore an array of treatment options.