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Naim U. Rashid, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Biostatistics
Gillings School of Global Public Health,
Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center
naim@unc.edu
+1 919 966 8150

Lineberger 20-020
450 West Drive
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC, 27599

Bio

Dr. Naim Rashid is an associate professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, and has a joint appointment at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center (LCCC). His methodological work spans several areas in genomics and statistics, addressing problems facing basic science, translational, and clinical researchers in cancer.

Previously, Dr. Rashid was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Department of Data Sciences at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, under Giovanni Parmigiani and Nikhil Munshi.

Awards & Honors

Recent honors:

  • Gillings Research Excellence Award — Gillings School of Global Public Health, 2025
  • James E. Grizzle Distinguished Alumnus Award — Department of Biostatistics, Gillings School of Global Public Health, 2024
  • Teaching Innovation Award — Gillings School of Global Public Health, 2023
  • Delta Omega Faculty Award — Gillings School of Global Public Health, 2021
  • IBM and R.J. Reynolds Junior Faculty Development Award — UNC-Chapel Hill, 2017
  • Barry H. Margolin Dissertation Award — UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, 2013

Research

Dr. Rashid’s publications have had wide impact, appearing in journals such as Nature, Nature Genetics, PNAS, JCO, Journal of the American Statistical Association, and Biometrics. Many of his statistical methods have been implemented as open-source software packages for the public to use.

Recent areas of research include precision medicine, multi-study replicability, clinical trials, cancer subtyping, and missing data problems in deep learning. He leverages this expertise in his role as an Associate Editor for the Annals of Applied Statistics and a member of the Nature Medicine Statistical Advisory Panel.

He also engages in collaborative studies at Lineberger, working with physicians and researchers on problems relating to genomics and clinical studies. As the Associate Director of the LCCC Biostatistics Shared Resource, he aids in the design of cancer clinical trials at UNC and elsewhere, serving as trial statistician on a number of active protocols.

As a member of the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium Statistical Working Group, he develops and reviews novel clinical trials in breast cancer with oncologists nationwide. He also serves as a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for The V Foundation for Cancer Research.

Funding

Active funding includes co-lead roles in NCI breast and pancreatic SPORE biostatistics cores, Co-PI for an ARPA-H adaptive platform, and PI for a DoD clinical trial navigation project. NIH support has been continuous since 2017.

Selected current awards:

  • Co-PI: U01 CA274298 (tumor and stroma integration)
  • PI: W81XWH-23-1-0665 (LLM-based clinical trial navigator for PDAC patients)
  • Core co-lead: P50 CA236733 (UNC SPORE in Pancreatic Cancer)
  • Core co-lead: P50 CA058223 (UNC SPORE in Breast Cancer)

Peer review service:

  • NIH ad hoc reviewer (ITCR, SBIR, R01); NSF DMS (2023); DoD CDMRP (2021, 2024); PCORI (2022)

Teaching

Each spring, Dr. Rashid also teaches BIOS 735, a doctoral-level course in the Department of Biostatistics covering topics such as writing efficient and reproducible code, implementing various optimization and numerical integration algorithms, and applying multiple machine learning methods. He also chairs the department’s doctoral applied exam committee, and serves on the UNC Gillings Research Council.

Collaboration

I work with clinicians and researchers at UNC Lineberger, cooperative groups, and other cancer centers on biostatistics and computational analyses. Current collaboration areas include:

Services:

  • Clinical trial design — Phase I/II adaptive designs, platform trials, biomarker-stratified randomization
  • Correlative analyses — Genomic data integration, tumor subtyping, stromal modeling
  • Biomarker discovery — Multi-omic integration, prognostic/predictive signature development
  • Statistical methods consulting — Power calculations, missing data strategies, high-dimensional analyses

Contact: Email naim@unc.edu with a brief project summary.

For UNC investigators: Contact the LCCC Biostatistics Shared Resource for support on SPORE projects and Lineberger trials.