Paola Sebastiani
Profiles

Paola Sebastiani, PhD

Adjunct Professor, Biostatistics - Boston University School of Public Health

617-358-2538
sebas@bu.edu
Crosstown Center - 317
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Biography

Paola Sebastiani, Ph.D. joined the Department of Biostatistics in 2003 as an Associate Professor, after holding faculty positions in Italy, England and United States. She is author of more than 200 peer-reviewed publications in theoretical and methodological statistics, artificial intelligence, computational biology and genetics. She is statistical consultant for Circulation and also a regular reviewer for major journals in statistics and computer science, and serves on the program committee of several international conferences at the interface between statistics and artificial intelligence. When she joined the Department of Biostatistics at Boston University in 2003, Dr. Sebastiani had experience in interdisciplinary collaborations and a track record of developing novel methodologies in Bayesian statistics, machine learning, decision theory, graphical modeling and statistical experimental design. She leveraged this experience to develop a wide network of collaborations with investigators from the Bioinformatics program, the Genetics and Genomics program, and the Molecular and Translational Medicine Program. In these collaborations Dr. Sebastiani often introduced original solutions by developing innovative Bayesian techniques for the analysis of genomic and genetic data and for the joint modeling of the genetic, genomic and phenotypic basis of complex traits. This work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes for Health and is currently funded by grants of which Dr. Sebastiani is Principal Investigator. Her contributions include, among others, a Bayesian model-based clustering procedure of temporal expression profiles (CAGED), a robust Bayesian approach to analyze differential gene expression using model averaging (BADGE), and novel methods for analysis of genetic data. Dr. Sebastiani was a pioneer in using a Bayesian network approach to model the genetic and phenotypic basis of complications of sickle cell anemia. She developed the first network model for predicting stroke in patients with sickle cell anemia and a network-based prognostic model that integrates sub-phenotypes of sickle cell anemia patients into a score of the overall severity of disease. This model was successfully evaluated by independent investigators and has opened several new research areas in sickle cell disease. These results were the fruit of a long and productive collaboration with Dr. Steinberg to study the genetic basis of different clinical presentations of sickle cell disease.

Dr. Sebastiani has also cultivated a strong and growing reputation as a biostatistician in the fields of gerontology, biology and epidemiology of human aging and longevity. She is the primary statistician of the BU site of the Long Life Family Study, and of the New England Centenarian Study directed by Dr. Thomas Perls. Dr. Sebastiani used an original Bayesian approach to verify the “compression of morbidity hypothesis” that had long been debated in the field of gerontology, developed a method for scoring sibships for familial longevity that can be used to enroll the most informative families in observational studies of human longevity, and introduced a novel Bayesian approach to model the genetic and phenotypic basis of exceptional human longevity. The analysis provides evidence that extreme human longevity is not due to absence of disease variants but to rare combinations of large numbers of common protective variants. Her current work focuses on the generation of molecular profiles to predict patterns of aging, and the biology of aging using a system-based approach.

Other Positions

  • Member, BU-BMC Cancer Center - Boston University
  • Investigator - Framingham Heart Study
  • Member, Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research - Boston University
  • - Boston Medical Center
  • Member, Bioinformatics Graduate Program - Boston University
  • Member, Genome Science Institute - Boston University

Education

  • University of Rome, PhD Field of Study: Statistics
  • University College London (UCL), MSc Field of Study: Applied Stochastic Systems
  • University of Perugia, BSc Field of Study: Mathematics

Websites

Publications

  • Published on 2/19/2025

    Liu A, Jacobs-McFarlane C, Sebastiani P, Glassberg J, McCuskee S, Curtis S. Plasma free hemoglobin is associated with LDH, AST, total bilirubin, reticulocyte count, and the hemolysis score in patients with sickle cell anemia. Ann Hematol. 2025 Feb 19. PMID: 39969536.

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  • Published on 2/11/2025

    Rogina B, Anderson R, Lebrasseur N, Curan S, Yousefzadeh MJ, Ghosh B, Duque G, Howlett S, Austad S, Demuth I, Gerstorf D, Korfhage J, Lombard DB, Abadir P, Christensen K, Carey JR, Alberts SC, Campos F, Palavicini JP, Palmer A, Bell J, Basisty N, de Cabo R, Gomes A, Dixit VD, Sen P, Baur JA, Imai SI, Li X, Valdez G, Orr ME, Pletcher S, Andersen J, Jones L, Castillo-Azofeida D, Bonaguidi M, Suh Y, Duncan FE, Murray A, Wang MC, Burkewitz K, Henne M, Zhou K, Bouhrara M, Benjamini D, Kolind S, Walker KA, Reiter DA, Dean Iii D, Gorbunova V, Gladyshev VN, Palovics R, Niedernhofer LJ, Fan R, Bueckle AD, Hurley J, Esser KA, Kapahi P, Sato S, Jiang N, Ashiqueali SA, Diaz J, Mishra SP, Ralmundo N, Banarjee R, Allsopp R, Reynolds LM, Zhang B, Sebastiani P, Monti S, Schork N, Rappaport N. Symposia Report of The Annual Biological Sciences Section Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America 2023, Tampa, Florida. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2025 Feb 11. PMID: 39932386.

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  • Published on 2/4/2025

    Hummer B, Sebastiani P, Leshchyk A, Gurinovich A, Bager C, Karsdal M, Nielsen S, Eaton C. Identification of novel plasma proteomic biomarkers of Dupuytren Disease. bioRxiv. 2025 Feb 04. PMID: 39763916.

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  • Published on 1/5/2025

    Xiang Q, Lok JJ, Roth N, Andersen SL, Perls TT, Song Z, Yashin AI, Mengel-From J, Patti GJ, Sebastiani P. Causal mediation analysis of the neuroprotection of APOE2 through lipid pathways. medRxiv. 2025 Jan 05. PMID: 39802799.

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  • Published on 1/3/2025

    Gurinovich A, Song Z, Bae H, Leshchyk A, Li M, Lords H, Andersen SL, Nygaard M, Christensen K, Daw EW, Arbeev KG, Brent MR, Perls TT, Sebastiani P. SNP rs6543176 is associated with extreme human longevity but increased risk for cancer. Geroscience. 2025 Jan 03. PMID: 39751714.

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  • Published on 11/12/2024

    Ellis D, Watanabe K, Wilmanski T, Lustgarten MS, Korat AVA, Glusman G, Hadlock JJ, Fiehn O, Sebastiani P, Price ND, Hood L, Magis AT, Evans SJ, Pflieger L, Lovejoy JC, Gibbons SM, Funk CC, Baloni P, Rappaport N. APOE Genotype and Biological Age Impact Inter-Omic Associations Related to Bioenergetics. bioRxiv. 2024 Nov 12. PMID: 39605362.

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  • Published on 11/5/2024

    Sebastiani P, Monti S, Lustgarten MS, Song Z, Ellis D, Tian Q, Schwaiger-Haber M, Stancliffe E, Leshchyk A, Short MI, Ardisson Korat AV, Gurinovich A, Karagiannis T, Li M, Lords HJ, Xiang Q, Marron MM, Bae H, Feitosa MF, Wojczynski MK, O'Connell JR, Montasser ME, Schupf N, Arbeev K, Yashin A, Schork N, Christensen K, Andersen SL, Ferrucci L, Rappaport N, Perls TT, Patti GJ. Metabolite signatures of chronological age, aging, survival, and longevity. Cell Rep. 2024 Nov 26; 43(11):114913. PMID: 39504246.

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  • Published on 9/25/2024

    Dowrey TW, Cranston SF, Skvir N, Lok Y, Gould B, Petrowitz B, Villar D, Shan J, James M, Dodge M, Belkina AC, Giadone RM, Milman S, Sebastiani P, Perls TT, Andersen SL, Murphy GJ. A longevity-specific bank of induced pluripotent stem cells from centenarians and their offspring. Aging Cell. 2025 Jan; 24(1):e14351. PMID: 39319670.

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  • Published on 9/18/2024

    Camarda ND, Lu Q, Meola DM, Man JJ, Song Z, Travers RJ, Lopez KE, Powers SN, Papanastasiou M, DeRuff KC, Mullahoo J, Egri SB, Davison D, Sebastiani P, Eblen ST, Buchsbaum R, Huggins GS, London CA, Jaffe JD, Upshaw JN, Yang VK, Jaffe IZ. Identifying mitigating strategies for endothelial cell dysfunction and hypertension in response to VEGF receptor inhibitors. Clin Sci (Lond). 2024 Sep 18; 138(18):1131-1150. PMID: 39282930.

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  • Published on 9/6/2024

    Thompson AL, Davis BS, Rohrbach A, Davis JM, Sebastiani P, Tang AM. Communication Disparities and Trusted Sources of COVID-19 Information in Massachusetts School Districts. J Public Health Manag Pract. 2025 Mar-Apr 01; 31(2):291-304. PMID: 39249147.

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