John Hughes

John Hughes is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Health Data Science at Lehigh University's College of Health. He holds a PhD in Statistics from Penn State University and has over 29 years of experience in academia, with previous appointments at institutions like the University of Minnesota and the University of Colorado. His research focuses on methodological advancements in statistical modeling for dependent data, Bayesian methods, and statistical computing. His interdisciplinary work spans environmental health, bioimaging, magnetic resonance safety, and vaccine hesitancy. He has developed numerous software packages for R and Perl, including copCAR and batchmeans.

• Education:
  • PhD in Statistics, Penn State University
  • MS in Statistics, Penn State University
  • MS in Applied Computer Science, Frostburg State University
  • BS in Mathematics and Computer Science, Frostburg State University
• Teaching: Courses include Advanced R Programming, Biostatistics, Population Health Data Science, and Computational methods.

His research interests emphasize spatial and spatiotemporal data analysis, with applications to public health and medical imaging. He has consulted for organizations such as the Minnesota Center for Chemical and Mental Health and Temple University. His software contributions include packages like krippendorffsalpha for agreement measurement and copCAR for spatial regression modeling.

Recent work focuses on improving statistical inference methods, analyzing vaccination refusal patterns, and developing frameworks for copula-based agreement coefficients. His articles highlight innovations in Bayesian computation, spatial epidemiology, and nonparametric statistics.

Dr. Hughes leads academic initiatives in biostatistics and health data science, fostering interdisciplinary collaborations and advancing statistical methodologies for real-world applications.