A senior investigator with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and a biostatistics professor from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health will speak on campus April 16 and 17. Both events are free and open to the public.

Germaine Buck Louis will speak at a Research Consortium on Children and Families colloquium at 3 p.m. April 16 in the Coker Life Sciences Building, Room 005.

Thomas A. Louis will speak in the statistics department at 2 p.m. April 17 in Davis College, Room 309.

The Louises are husband and wife.

Germaine is the chief and senior investigator of the Epidemiology Branch and Acting Director of the Division of Epidemiology, Statistics and Prevention Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), National Institutes of Health. Before joining the NICHD in 2000, Germaine was a professor for thirteen years in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University at Buffalo. She has master's and doctoral degrees in epidemiology from the University of Buffalo, State of New York.

At the April 16 colloquium, Germaine will talk about research happenings and opportunities in epidemiology, biostatistics, and health behavioral research at the NICHD. Her visit is sponsored by the USC Research Consortium on Children and Families, and the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics of the Arnold School of Public Health.

Her research interests primarily focus on the interplay between environmental exposures, behavior and human reproduction and development. She has conducted several studies focusing on environmental contaminants and sensitive reproductive and developmental outcomes. She also engages in methodological research aimed at the assessment of mixtures and health outcomes, parental interactions of exposure, modeling dependent pregnancy outcomes, and use of technologies for field-based research.

Thomas is professor of biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Earlier in his career, he held faculty positions at Boston University, Harvard School of Public Health, and University of Minnesota School of Public Health. He also was a senior statistical scientist with Rand Corp.

At the April 17 colloquium, Thomas will talk about the performance of optimal Bayesian ranking methods. His research includes risk assessment, environmental and public policy, Bayesian methods, the analysis of longitudinal data in both experimental, and observational studies. He has published more than 200 chapters, books, and articles. He earned a PhD in mathematical statistics from Columbia University.

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