Department of Biostatistics

Home > Faculty > Ryan Sun

Assisant Professor Ryan Sun

About Dr. Sun

Ryan Sun, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at MD Anderson.

His research interests lie in developing novel statistical methodology that enables researchers to extract knowledge and insights from increasingly complex biomedical datasets. He also emphasizes applying these methods and disseminating the ideas to the broader biomedical research community. Currently he works heavily with genetics and genomics datasets to better understand the underlying causes of cancers and other diseases. In particular, he is focused on integrating different types of data, e.g. environmental, clinical, or other omics data, to better understand the genetic and genomic etiology of disease.

For more information and software downloads, please see Dr. Sun’s personal website.

Education

  • B.S. (Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, 2012),
  • M.A. (Biostatistics, Harvard University, 2014).
  • Ph.D. (Biostatistics, Harvard University, 2017).

Selected Publications

Peer-Reviewed Articles

  1. Sun R, Hui S, Bader GD, Lin X, Kraft P. Powerful gene set analysis in GWAS with the Generalized Berk-Jones statistic. PLoS Genet 15(3):e1007530, 2019. e-Pub 2019. PMID: 30875371.
  2. Orkaby AR, Rich MW, Sun R, Lux E, Wei LJ, Kim DH. Pravastatin for Primary Prevention in Older Adults: Restricted Mean Survival Time Analysis. J Am Geriatr Soc 66(10):1987-1991, 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 30251369.
  3. Sun R, Carroll RJ, Christiani DC, Lin X. Testing for gene-environment interaction under exposure misspecification. Biometrics 74(2):653-662, 2018. e-Pub 2017. PMID: 29120492.
  4. Wang Z, Claus Henn B, Wang C, Wei Y, Su L, Sun R, Chen H, Wagner PJ, Lu Q, Lin X, Wright R, Bellinger D, Kile M, Mazumdar M, Tellez-Rojo MM, Schnaas L, Christiani DC. Genome-wide gene by lead exposure interaction analysis identifies UNC5D as a candidate gene for neurodevelopment. Environ Health 16(1):81, 2017. e-Pub 2017. PMID: 28754176.
  5. Sun R, Bouchard MB, Hillman EM. SPLASSH: Open source software for camera-based high-speed, multispectral in-vivo optical image acquisition. Biomed Opt Express 1(2):385-397, 2010. e-Pub 2010. PMID: 21258475.
  6. Sun R, Lin X. Genetic Variant Set-Based Tests Using the Generalized Berk-Jones Statistic with Application to a Genome-Wide Association Study of Breast Cancer. Journal of the American Statistical Association. e-Pub 2019.
  7. Sun R, Wang Z, Claus Henn B, Su L, Lu Q, Lin X, Wright RO, Bellinger DC, Kile M, Mazumdar M, Tellez-Rojo MM, Schnaas L, Christiani DC. Identification of novel loci associated with infant cognitive ability. Mol Psychiatry. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 30120420.
  8. Gaynor SM, Sun R, Lin X, Quackenbush J. Identification of differentially expressed gene sets using the Generalized Berk-Jones statistica. Bioinformatics. e-Pub 2019. PMID: 31062858.

Letters to the Editor

  1. Wei LJ, Sun R, Orkaby AR, Kim DH, Zhu H. Biodegradable-polymer stents versus durable-polymer stents. Lancet 393: 1932-1933, 2019.
  2. Sun R, Zhu H, Wei LJ. Assessing the Prognostic Value of the Automated Bone Scan Index for Prostate Cancer. JAMA Oncol 5: 270, 2019.
  3. Sun R, Lee H, Wei LJ. Interpreting the Long-term Prognostic Value of Total Mesorectal Excision Plane Quality in Rectal Adenocarcinoma. JAMA Surg 154: 96, 2019.
  4. Sun R, Wei LJ. Regional Hyperthermia With Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy for Treatment of Soft Tissue Sarcoma. JAMA Oncol 5: 112-113, 2019.
  5. Sun R, Nie L, Huang B, Kim DH, Wei LJ. Quantifying Immunoscore performance. Lancet 392: 1624, 2018.
  6. Sun R, Rich MW, Wei LJ. Pembrolizumab plus Chemotherapy in Lung Cancer. N Engl J Med 379: e18, 2018.
  7. Sun R, Horiguchi M, Wei LJ. Interpreting the Benefit of Trifluridine/Tipiracil in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer With Respect to Progression-Free Survival and Overall Survival. J Clin Oncol 36: 1378-1379, 2018.