Jeffrey Morris

In addition to his professorial role, Dr. Morris serves as Director of the Division of Biostatistics. His research interests focus on developing quantitative methods to extract knowledge from biomedical big data, including work to relate complex biomedical object data—including functions, images and manifolds—to patient outcomes and characteristics using flexible, automated regression methods, and to integrate information across multiple types of multi-platform genomic, proteomic, imaging, and wearable device data to uncover biomedical insights contained in these complex data. He has done extensive applied work in cancer research, including constructing novel prognostic indices for hepatocellular carcinoma and helping develop and characterize molecular subtypes of colorectal cancer to discover new precision therapeutic strategies.

Dr. Morris is a Fellow of the Institute for Mathematical Statistics (IMS) and of the American Statistical Association (ASA), and has been recognized with various national honors, including the ASA’s Noether Young Scholar Award and Harvard University’s Myrto Leftkopoulou Distinguished Invited Lectureship. Dr. Morris was honored by M.D. Anderson with the 2018-19 Faculty Mentoring Award, given annually to one research faculty member in the institution. He has served as President of the East North American Region (ENAR) of the International Biometric Society and overall program chair for the Joint Statistical Meetings, the largest statistical meetings in the world. He also is currently the editor of Biology, Medicine and Genomics for the IMS journal The Annals of Applied Statistics and has served as an associate editor of several leading data science journals, including Biometrics and the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B.

Selected Publications

• Morris JS, Luthra R, Liu Y, Duose DY, Lee W, Reddy NG, Windham J, Chen H, Tong Z, Zhang B, Wei W, Ganiraju M, Broom BM, Alvarez HA, Mejia A, Veeranki O, Routbort MJ, Morris VK, Overman MJ, Menter D, Katkhuda R, Wistuba II, Davis JS, Kopetz S, Maru DM: Development and Validation of a Gene Signature Classifier for Consensus Molecular Subtyping of Colorectal Carcinoma in a CLIA-Certified Setting. Clinical Cancer Research Oct 2020 Notes: Online ahead of print.
• Morris JS, Hassan MM, Zohner YE, Wang Z, Xiao L, Rashid A, Haque A, Abdel-Wahab R, Mohamed YI, Ballard KL, Wolff RA, George B, Li L, Allen G, Weylandt M, Li D, Wang W, Raghav K, Yao J, Amin HM, Kaseb AO: HepatoScore-14: Measures of biological heterogeneity significantly improve prediction of hepatocellular carcinoma risk. Hepatology Sep 2020 Notes: Epub ahead of print.
• Lacin S, Yalcin S, Karakas Y, Hassan MM, Amin H, Mohamed YI, Rashid A, Morris JS, Xiao L, Qayyum A, Kaseb AO: Prognostic Significance of Serum Insulin-Like Growth Factor-1 in Hepatocellular Cancer Patients: A Validation Study. Journal of Hepatocellular Carcinoma 7: 143-153, Sep 2020 Notes: eCollection 2020.
• Evrard YA, Srivastava A, Randjelovic J, Doroshow JH, Dean DA 2nd, Morris JS, Chuang JH; NCI PDXNet Consortium: Systematic Establishment of Robustness and Standards in Patient-Derived Xenograft Experiments and Analysis. Cancer Research 80(11): 2286-2297, Jun 2020.
• Wilson KI, Godara P, Jasien JV, Zohner E, Morris JS, Girkin CA, Samuels BC, Downs JC: Intra-Subject Variability and Diurnal Cycle of Ocular Perfusion Pressure as Characterized by Continuous Telemetry in Nonhuman Primates. Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science 61(6): 7, Jun 2020.
• Moore JH, Barnett I, Boland MR, Chen Y, Demiris G, Gonzalez-Hernandez G, Herman DS, Himes BE, Hubbard RA, Kim D, Morris JS, Mowery DL, Ritchie MD, Shen L, Urbanawicz R, and Holmes JH: Ideas for how informaticians can get involved with COVID-19 research. BioData Mining 13: 3, May 2020.
• Morris JS: Keeping the country closed until everyone is tested is not feasible. Philadelphia Inquirer Apr 2020.
• Liu Y, Li M, and Morris JS: Function-on-scalar quantile regression with application to mass spectrometry proteomics data. Annals of Applied Statistics 14(2): 521-541, 2020.
• Yang H, Baladandayuthapani V, Rao AUK, Morris JS: Quantile Function on Scalar Regression Analysis for Distributional Data. Journal of the American Statistical Association 115(529): 90-106, 2020 Notes: Epub 2019 Jun 21.
• Fazio MA, Girard MJA, Lee W, Morris JS, Burgoyne CF, Downs JC: The Relationship Between Scleral Strain Change and Differential Cumulative Intraocular Pressure Exposure in the Nonhuman Primate Chronic Ocular Hypertension Model. Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science 60(13): 4141-50, Oct 2019.