Gina McKernan, PhD, is a data scientist and biostatistician, with over 15 years of industry and academic experience. She has a multidisciplinary background in statistics, measurement, and research, working within Integrated Delivery and Finance Systems (IDFS), the University of Pittsburgh, and the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. Dr. McKernan obtained her doctorate in Research Methodology from the University of Pittsburgh, concentrating on advanced statistical methods. Dr. McKernan led the healthcare marketing industry in using statistical methods and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to design service utilization, cost-savings, and capacity planning models in both the payor and provider space. The first two years of her academic career has resulted in an immersion of primary and secondary research projects focused on the evaluation of technology, protocols, interventions, and data associated with improving the quality of life in persons with disabilities, Spina Bifida (SB) traumatic brain injury (TBI), spinal cord injury (SCI), and stroke.
She has collaborated with 14 unique investigators on federally-funded grant applications and currently serve as co-investigator (CO-I) on 7 active projects, totaling over $20 million in research funds. Dr. McKernan was recently awarded a VA pilot grant to study latent relationships between disability rates and socio-geographic variables, such as: neighborhood characteristics, living conditions, access to care, and health/preventative behaviors in veterans. In addition, her current research interest and funded work includes: using ML techniques to analyze behavioral and psychosocial outcomes of people with disabilities, creating enhanced data structures by appending socio-geographic and demographic data to existing clinical data, and analysis of randomized controlled trials involving neuro-stimulation and pharmacologics for individuals who have experienced stroke, TBI, and other conditions.
Current Project(s):
Co-Investigator, R1 Voice of Stakeholders
Statistician of the RERC