Rate My Professor Sarah Ratcliffe

Sarah Ratcliffe, Ph.D., is Professor of Biostatistics, Vice Chair for Research, and Director of the Division of Biostatistics in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She joined the UVA faculty in 2018 after 17 years at the University of Pennsylvania, including a postdoctoral fellowship in the School of Medicine. Ratcliffe earned her Ph.D. in Statistics from Macquarie University, Australia, and her B.S. (Honors) in Mathematics from the University of Technology, Sydney. In her current roles, she oversees data coordination and statistical analysis activities at the Center for Advanced Medical Analytics and serves as Director of the Research Methods core for the UVA Clinical and Translational Science Award (iTHRIV).

Ratcliffe's academic interests center on functional data analysis for complex curves and streaming data, joint models for longitudinal and survival data, predictive modeling, and techniques to handle informative dropout. She has contributed to clinical research in neonatology, maternal-fetal medicine, cardiology, critical care, HIV/AIDS, and women's health, serving as statistical lead on Data Safety Monitoring Boards and NIH study sections. As principal or multiple principal investigator, she has directed projects including the NIH U24 Data Coordinating Center for the DIVA Trial, PCORI-funded SUGAR Trial, and NIH R01 grants on transplant prediction algorithms and longitudinal biomarker trajectories. With over 230 peer-reviewed publications, key works include "Joint modeling of longitudinal and survival data via a common random effects structure" (2004), "The epidemiology of intensive care unit readmissions in the United States" (2012), "Measuring and Analyzing Length of Stay in Critical Care Trials" (2019), and "Cardiorespiratory Monitoring Data to Predict Respiratory Outcomes in Extremely Preterm Infants" (2023). Her honors include the 2021 UVA School of Medicine Dean's Senior Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, election as Fellow of the American Statistical Association (2020), presidency of the Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society (ENAR, 2019), and election as International Biometric Society Treasurer (2024-2025).