Igor Dvorchik, Director of Biostatistics

Igor Dvorchik, PhD, is director of Biostatistics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Modern biology often relies greatly on the science of biostatistics and its ability to direct experimental design, and collect, summarize and analyze scientific data. Dr. Dvorchik’s first priority will be to develop Nationwide Children’s Biostatistics Shared Resource (BSR), a service-oriented statistical unit available to all Nationwide Children’s investigators and physician scientists. This centralized biostatistics resource will further enhance Nationwide Children’s ability to advance quality, effectiveness and efficiency of pediatric clinical care.Before joining Nationwide Children’s, Dr. Dvorchik was associate professor of Surgery and Biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh and directed the medical decision and research support groups in bioinformatics at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Most recently, he served as a director of bioinformatics at Barrow Neurological Institute at Phoenix Children’s Hospital and as senior biostatistician. In these roles, he helped initiate multiple novel research studies and actively participated in clinical outcome research. While at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Dvorchik’s research focused on outcome and medical decision-making in cardiology, organ and bone marrow transplantation, intensive care and hepatology and liver cancer. His work helped clarify the effects of HLA matching between recipient and donor on liver transplantation outcome, helped elucidate the effects of immunosuppressive medications on the course of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and quantified the incidence of colorectal cancer in patients with IBD and primary sclerosing cholangitis. This research received international recognition and directly affected the medical care of these patient groups. Dr. Dvorchik’s work on outcome modeling for hepatocellular carcinoma played an important role in restating financial coverage for U.S. liver transplantation patients with this terminal disease.Dr. Dvorchik received a PhD in Electrophysics from Kharkov Railway University, Kharkov, USSR and a PhD in Applied Statistics and Monitoring and Control of Biological Systems Behavior from St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University, St. Petersburg, Russia. He has published 66 peer-reviewed manuscripts in various scientific journals including eight as the first and eight as a senior author. He is a co-author of three book chapters and has presented more than 20 abstracts at national and international meetings.