Michael O’Brien is a Master’s level Statistician and Base SAS Certified Programmer who has extensive experiences both in school and in the business world. Michael’s areas of knowledge are mathematics, statistics, technical writing and statistical programming using R, S+ and SAS. While in grad school, he analyzed and interpreted epidemiological, categorical, survival, survey and US Census data.  He took the initiative in writing reports for group projects and managed to get excellent grades for the group. Throughout his career, Michael has been known to troubleshoot problems and quickly find a solution.  He is known for his attention to detail and sharp analytical skills.  Michael is driven and dedicated to producing high quality work in a timely fashion.  A huge believer in organization and scheduling, Michael can effectively balance multiple tasks and adjust to a fluid work environment and still face hard deadlines at the same time.  This was proven by his 12 years of success at Bristol-Myers Squibb in a phase-1 clinical research facility.

One of Michael’s most recent work experiences was in the Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR) department for Novo Nordisk in Princeton, NJ. There, he was a biostatistician/SAS programmer for HEOR in Diabetes Marketing. On the job, Michael taught himself the Thompson Reuters Marketscan database and how to access it on a UNIX server using Windows SAS. He also conducted retrospective analysis of pharmaceutical claims data to examine the effects of cost on incidence of compliance and occurance rate of adverse events of different therapies for diabetic patients. Michael used SAS to merge and query large data sets (up to 120 million records) and reduced the data using various inclusion and exclusion criteria. Michael also learned UNIX commands for accessing and manipulating data files.

Michael is currently consulting for Aestus Therapeutics in East Windsor, NJ where he is using JMP Genomics software to solve many business problems using gene expression data for neurological research. Among other tasks, Michael is looking at cluster analysis and looking at plots of pairs of different correlation coefficients to flag outliers in the data in order to identify certain genes that are biologicaly active in certain neurological diseases.

Some of Michael’s achievements and current projects include the following:

  • Learned clinical data structures (C-DISC) including ADaM and STDM; their variable prefixes, domain structures and standards.
  • Implement JMP Genomics (a menu-driven version of SAS) for genomic data mining through workflow evaluation and standardization (i.e. using JMP for data processing, QC and consolidation).  Establish, document and test unified workflow system for gene chip data processing.
  • Modify JMP for batch processing of gene expression data (t-test, z-score, FDR) and conducting meta-analysis of gene expression data.
  • Adapt JMP for cluster analysis using QT clustering and Tukey’s biweight analysis with graphic and tabular annotation. Compare calculated correlations to flag disparate cluster correlation calculations.
  • Customize JMP Genomics to allow rapid re-clustering visualization based on sample choice.
  • Earned 2 “Star” and 2 “On the Spot” awards while at BMS.

Michael graduated from Rutgers University with a BA in Mathematics and an MS in Statistics (emphasis in biostatistics).  His Master’s degree GPA was a 3.2/4.0 and was accomplished while working a full time job plus regular overtime.  He has 4+ years of experience with SAS, is Base SAS certified and is working towards Advanced SAS Certification later in 2011.  With 3 years experience with R and S+, Michael is well versed in statistical programming.  Michael is also a well-respected math and statistics tutor who has worked with 65+ students since 1991.

One interesting note; Michael used to be a trumpet player while in school and performed with Dizzy Gillespie in 1984 for one evening. He is also a member of Toastmaster’s International.

Join my LinkedIn group : Leaders in Biostatistics in Central NJ

Need a math tutor in Central NJ? Contact me at: http://www.wyzant.com/Tutors/MathManMike