Jianwen Cai

Jianwen Cai, PhD, is the Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Global Public Health. She leads interdisciplinary research in survival analysis, clinical trial design, and epidemiological methods, with a focus on cardiovascular disease, cancer, and obesity. Dr. Cai has held leadership roles including Interim Co-Chair and Vice Chair of the Department of Biostatistics, and has directed the Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center (CSCC).

Her education includes a PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Washington (1992), followed by postdoctoral research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She has been recognized with prestigious awards, including Fellowships from the American Statistical Association (2005) and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (2009), and the McGavran Award for Excellence in Teaching (2004).

Research interests span statistical methods for multivariate survival data, case-cohort designs, and outcome-dependent sampling. She has authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles and serves on editorial boards for journals like Biometrics and Lifetime Data Analysis. Her work emphasizes Hispanic/Latino health disparities, leveraging large-scale cohorts such as the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL).

Dr. Cai has mentored 22 doctoral students, 18 Master’s students, and 6 postdoctoral fellows. Her grants include NIH-funded projects on biomarkers in Latinos, diabetes epidemiology, and cognitive aging. She chairs national committees and serves on the NIH Heart Failure Network’s Protocol Review Committee.