Susan M. Sereika

PhD
Associate Dean
Professor
Health & Community Systems

Profile

Dr. Susan Sereika is a Professor in the Department of Health and Community Systems in the School of Nursing and has secondary appointments in the Department of Biostatistics and Health Data Science and the Department of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and in the Clinical and Translational Science Institute.  As an administrator, Dr. Sereika is the Associate Dean for Computing and Information Technology in the School of Nursing. In this role she oversees computing and information science capabilities in the School of Nursing and serves as a liaison with Health Sciences Information Technology.  Since 1992 she has served as either an elected or protem committee member and sometime co-chair of the Senate Computing and Information Technology Committee of the University of Pittsburgh and serves in an advisory capacity on the Information Technology Advisory Committee of Pitt IT. Dr. Sereika is also a faculty statistician in the Office of Research Scholarship in the School of Nursing and an affiliated faculty statistician in the Biostatistical Facility at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. In this regard, she has over 35 years of experience in the management and statistical analysis of data from cross-sectional and longitudinal observational studies and clinical trials. She has collaborated as a co-investigator and statistician on extramurally funded research projects and core leader on core center grants and program project grants.

Scholarly Emphasis

Dr. Sereika’s areas of statistical expertise are in longitudinal data analysis, particularly for intensive data from electronic event and lifestyle monitoring (Aardex MEMS, Fitbit, actigraphy, etc.) and self-report diaries; latent variable methods, including latent class models, such as group-based trajectory, dual trajectory and multi-trajectory analyses; model assessment; and more recently dyadic analysis.  She has also collaborated and published extensively on weight loss, self-management of lifestyle behaviors, symptom management and regimen adherence.

Teaching

Dr. Sereika teaches a PhD level, 3-credit didactic course entitled NUR 3290: Advanced Quantitative Methods Seminar which covers a variety of statistical methods such as exploratory data analysis, missing data analysis, sample size and effect size estimation, regression modeling, categorical data analysis, repeated measures analysis and meta-analysis. She also offers 1- to 3-credit PhD-level independent studies (NUR 3060: Independent Study) tailored to the student’s research and statistics needs and interests. Additionally, she has served as a committee member/statistical mentor and sometime co-chair on honors and master theses and dissertations, statistical consultant on individual pre- and post-doctoral training fellowships and faculty on institutional training grants.

Service

 Dr. Sereika is active member in various statistical (e.g., ASA, ENAR) and more disease focused (e.g., AHA, ADA, ISPAD) professional organizations. She has served as statistical reviewer on numerous journals, ad hoc study section reviewer on NIH applications, and statistical editor and board member on several journals.