Spring 2026 Graduating Student Profile
Katie Herder
PhD in Biostatistics
Public Health doctoral student supported range of research, from pain and addiction to patient experience in primary care
Katie Herder graduated with her PhD in Biostatistics. Over the course of her educational journey, she worked extensively with the UA’s Center for Comprehensive Pain and Addiction, showed leadership in the college’s Student Ambassadors group, and participated in many educational opportunities outside the college including the Global Health Institute Scholars program. She won the Spring 2026 Student Life Award.
Katie Herder
PhD in Biostatistics
Katie Herder graduated with her PhD in Biostatistics. For the majority of her time in the program, she worked on research with the UA’s Center for Comprehensive Pain and Addiction (CCPA) investigating the intersection of chronic pain and mental health in U.S. adults. Her dissertation is titled Improving Comparability in Network Meta-Analysis: Dose, Heterogeneity, and a Mixed Treatments in Depression Research. For her next chapter, Katie will start a tenure-track position at California Polytechnic State University.
In addition to her work with CCPA, Katie also pursued many training programs outside the college, including an internship with Cytokinetics, a biopharmaceutical company, and the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science. She also worked with researchers at the University of Limerick in Ireland as part of the Global Health Institute Scholars program.
During her time in the college, she was also an invaluable member of our Student Ambassadors program. Her positive presence and thoughtful contributions consistently enriched the ambassador team, particularly when she shared her MEZCOPH experiences with prospective students. Katie demonstrated exceptional leadership within the ambassador group, and her innovative ideas shaped how the ambassadors engage and connect with students from diverse backgrounds and experiences.
Katie won the Spring 2026 Student Life Award.
Thank you Katie for your commitment to service, and congratulations on your PhD!
For this profile, we asked Katie about highlights from her experience in the college.
Q: In addition to your classes, what projects or programs (often internships) did you work on while earning your degree?
A: For the majority of my PhD program, I worked as a graduate research associate with the UA Center for Comprehensive Pain and Addiction (CCPA). In that position, I contributed to several manuscripts that examined the intersection of chronic pain and mental health in U.S. adults. That research included work on depressive symptom screening in chronic pain populations, prevalence of co-occurring anxiety and depression, unmet mental health needs, and barriers to psychological trauma screening in primary care settings.
I also tried to make the most of every summer break. In 2023, I completed an internship in the biometrics department at Cytokinetics, a biopharmaceutical company in South San Francisco, which led to ongoing consulting work.
In 2024, I was a Global Health Institute Scholar and traveled to Ireland, where I collaborated with researchers in the College of Medicine at the University of Limerick on INSIGHT-GP, a project examining the health status and healthcare experiences of people over 70 in Irish primary care. We compared the experiences of Irish patients to Ukrainian refugees and evaluated how well medical data captured their health conditions and healthcare use.
Last summer, I participated in the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science held in Lake Como, Italy, where I spent two weeks learning about current research in computational social science. This experience also led to new collaborations – I'm currently working with a group on a paper evaluating the performance of open-weight large language models on medical fake news classification.
Q: What are some challenges or obstacles that you had to overcome in the process of your education in the college, or in the projects/programs in which you worked?
A: The course content could be incredibly challenging at times, especially as someone coming from a non-math background. Statistical theory was particularly brutal! I failed my qualifying exam the first time around. I've learned to embrace feelings of discomfort and confusion, and to have faith that they'll eventually pass.
Perseverance is far more valuable than natural talent in academia. Failure and rejection are essential experiences – the key is learning to grow from them and try again. Sometimes when I'm feeling imposter syndrome, I reflect on how much I've learned in four years. It reminds me that even small increments of progress add up, and there's always so much more to learn if you just keep going. Be confident in yourself and remember everyone who knows something at one point knew nothing!
I've learned that this insight applies beyond grad school too. Papers get rejected, applications get denied, projects fail. But I can tell you: if you keep rolling the dice, you'll eventually get wins. Persistence improves your odds—that's just statistics.
Q: How will your education and experience as a public health student influence your path forward?
A: In the fall of 2026, I'll be starting a tenure-track faculty position in the statistics department at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. So, I'm leaning into the "statistics" side of biostatistics, but my public health background deeply influences my teaching approach. I naturally gravitate toward applied examples in health sciences because I'm passionate about statistical rigor in public health research.
One key lesson I want to emphasize is that research alone isn't enough. We can provide evidence that an intervention works, but that evidence is meaningless if it can't be implemented in the communities that need it most. There are countless barriers preventing people from accessing help. Statistical evidence matters, but we also need to work toward systemic change, often requiring complete system overhaul, to ensure people actually get the care they deserve.
I see it as my responsibility to help shape the next generation of statistical researchers to be thoughtful and consider the human impact of their work, whether in public health or other fields. When data reflect real human experiences, we need to respect and honor that. In my teaching, I'll always ground statistical methods in the bigger picture—understanding who's affected by our work, what systems are at stake, and the real-world consequences of our claims.