Matthew J. Gurka, PhD, is the Evelyn Troup Hobson Professor and Chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences (PHS) in the School of Medicine at the University of Virginia. Having begun his career in PHS (2004-2010), Dr. Gurka re-joined the UVA faculty in Spring 2024 after 5 years at West Virginia University (Founding Chair, Department of Biostatistics) and 8 years at the University of Florida (Director, Pediatric Research Hub).
Dr. Gurka is a biostatistician whose primary statistical interest is in longitudinal data methods, and more recently, pragmatic clinical trials. He has published articles in renowned statistical journals regarding complexities associated with the use of linear mixed models, and he served on the Editorial Panel of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A. As a collaborative biostatistician, Dr. Gurka has been an instrumental co-investigator on research teams that have attained over $50 million in extramural funding over the past 15 years. The majority of his collaborative research has been in pediatrics; his leadership in child health research was recognized by his election to the Society for Pediatric Research and being named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. He has served on the editorial boards of both Pediatrics and the Journal of Pediatrics.
Dr. Gurka has also demonstrated consistent success as a principal investigator (PI)-funded researcher. Leveraging his collaborations, he has developed and directed his own research projects, often alongside clinical colleagues, which has led to continuous PI or multi-PI funding since 2008. Along with Dr. Mark DeBoer, a pediatric endocrinologist at UVA, Dr. Gurka developed a MetS severity measure applicable across the lifespan that has been validated as a predictor of future disease and has elucidated relationships between MetS and other conditions such as depression and stress. They are currently funded by the NHLBI to study MetS severity in the “real-world” using All of Us data.
Evelyn Troup Hobson Professor and Chair
Department of Public Health Sciences
PhD, Biostatistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
P.O. Box 800717
Charlottesville, VA 22908-0717
Tel: 1-434-982-4035
Email: mgurka@virginia.edu
West Complex Room 3189
Expertise:
Longitudinal data analysis, pragmatic clinical trials, observational data analysis, cohort development.
Research Interests:
Cluster randomized trial design, electronic health record data analysis, child health, obesity and cardiometabolic disease.
Recent Publications:
A complete list of published work is available at MyBibliography and Google Scholar.
Links to More Information: