• Portrait of Razvan Romanescu
  • Assistant professor

    Max Rady College of Medicine
    Community Health Sciences
    Room 351, 753 McDermot Avenue
    University of Manitoba
    Winnipeg, Manitoba R3E 0T6

    Phone: 204-594-5374
    razvan.romanescu@umanitoba.ca

Research summary

My research in the field of Biostatistics falls into two main themes: methods in statistical genetics/ bioinformatics, and models of epidemic spread. In genetics, I am interested in devising efficient methods to analyze –omics datasets with the aim of discovering molecular signatures of disease in genes and their pathways. In particular, my focus is on combining information from a large number of tests to improve power to detect associations in designs that have small sample or effect sizes. In infectious diseases, I have been investigating how respiratory pathogens spread over network-based models of the population, and am currently leading funded research to predict COVID-19 case counts.

    • Research affiliations

      Research associate – Biostatistical Consultant, Centre for Healthcare Innovation (CHI)

    • Keywords

      • biostatistics
      • genetic epidemiology
      • infectious disease models
      • methods to analyze -omics data
      • nonparametric modeling
      • statistical genetics

    Biography

    Dr. Romanescu is an assistant professor in community health sciences at the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Manitoba. He did his post-doctoral training at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, where he developed models for genetic association in familial breast cancer.

    In January 2020, he joined the Data Science platform at Centre for Healthcare Innovation as consulting biostatistician with the Biostatistics Group. In this capacity, he maintains diverse collaborations with researchers in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, as well as with external clients.

    Currently, Dr. Romanescu is interested in methods that support statistical inference in genetic datasets. This includes procedures for multiple hypothesis testing, as well as inference in computationally complex problems in bioinformatics, such as gene set enrichment analysis. These methods can be applied to all types of data (genotyping, sequencing, expression, etc.) from a variety of conditions.

    • Education

      Postdoctoral fellow, Lunenfeld, Tanenbaum Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital (2020)

      PhD in Applied Statistics, University of Guelph (2016)

      Master of Mathematics, University of Waterloo (2009)

      Bachelor of Science (Hons), University of Toronto (2007)

    • Awards

      Biostatistics Training Initiative Fellowship from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, postdoctoral level (2017 - 2019)

      CIHR STAGE Fellowship Award, postdoctoral level (2018 - 2019)

      Ontario Graduate Fellowship, doctoral level (2015 - 2016)  

      Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs HQP Scholarship, doctoral level (2012 - 2015)         

      NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Scholarship, Masters level (2007 - 2008)           

      President’s Graduate Scholarship, Masters level (2007 - 2008)

    Contact us

    Community Health Sciences
    Max Rady College of Medicine
    Room S113 - 750 Bannatyne Avenue
    University of Manitoba (Bannatyne campus)
    Winnipeg, MB R3E 0W3 Canada

    204-789-3655