Mission
Advancing data science to accelerate biomedical research and improve human health
About Us
The Department of Biostatistics & Medical Informatics (BMI) is the home of data science for the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine & Public Health (UW SMPH), an academic medical center. BMI is a leading research hub and training center for biomedical data sciences, including biostatistics and biomedical informatics.
BMI investigators are engaged in basic discovery science, clinical trials, image analysis, genomics, computational biology, and population studies, and they advance research throughout the SMPH. This research is often multi-faceted and collaborative, and faculty have joint or affiliate appointments with many other campus units: Statistics, Computer Sciences, Population Health Sciences, Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Morgridge Institute for Research, and the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery.
BMI is home to MS and PhD Programs in Biomedical Data Science (BDS). Our faculty contribute to many other degree programs, including the Biostatistics Degree Option (Dept of Statistics), Clinical Investigation, Computer Sciences, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and several professional degree programs.

BMI faculty and research staff provide consultation and collaboration in the planning, design, conduct, and analysis of basic, translational, and clinical research.
PhD in Biomedical Data Science
The current explosion of biomedical data, including Electronic medical records (EHR), biomedical imaging, and genomics/proteomics/metabolomics, provide an awesome opportunity to improve understanding of the mechanisms of disease and ultimately to improve human health care. The Doctoral Degree Program in Biomedical Data Science will provide you with a unique blend of skills including programming, data management, data analysis, and machine learning. Successful graduates will be prepared to fully harness the power of high-dimensional, heterogeneous data. Potential students include both students with bachelor’s degrees in an area of data-science (e.g., computer science, statistics), as well as health professionals, clinicians, and others with degrees related to biomedicine (e.g., biology, biochemistry, genetics). Consider applying today!
News and Events
AI News: Christina Kendziorski’s lab reports new multi-agent LLM for cell annotation
BMI Professor Christina Kendziorski and her lab report CASSIA, a new multi-agent large language model for automated and interpretable cell annotation in Nature Communications. Large-language models have potential to improve cell annotation, but face challenges, …
December 15, 2025Former BMI Chair, Paul Rathouz, Passed Away
This post bears the sad news that Paul Rathouz, Professor and former Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, passed away on Wednesday, December 10, 2025, surrounded by family. Paul served as BMI …
December 11, 2025- More News posts







