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Kristine Gierz (Fed)
Mathematical Statistician
Kristine Gierz is a Mathematical Statistician in the Statistical Engineering Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Information Technology Laboratory (ITL), where she brings a cross-disciplinary perspective to problems in biostatistics, bioinformatics, and applied statistical engineering.
She holds a B.S. in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology from UCLA and earned both her M.S. and Ph.D. in Biostatistics from Old Dominion University. After a formative early experience in marine conservation in Fiji, she transitioned into biostatistics & bioinformatics, gaining expertise in computational methods and the statistical analysis of complex biological and experimental systems.
Her doctoral research was supported by the National Science Foundation’s Mathematical Sciences Graduate Internship and a graduate fellowship at NIST. She later received the Department of Defense SMART Scholarship-for-Service and worked as an Operations Research Analyst at the Pentagon, where she led high-impact quantitative analyses on topics including military health and equity—contributing to the Department’s first Racial-Ethnic and Gender Disparity Review and its first Maternal Health and Wellness Survey.
Since rejoining NIST in 2022, Kristine’s research has focused on bioinformatics applications, censored data analysis, change point detection, uncertainty quantification, and statistical computing. She has a special interest in adapting statistical models to support emerging biological and digital measurement technologies.
Outside of work, Kristine enjoys all things outdoors, is an avid reader and gardener, a reluctant distance runner, and a very amateur ukulele player.
technical areas of research and consulting
- Biostatistics & Bioinformatics
- Bayesian analysis
- Survival analysis
- Uncertainty analysis
- Non-parametric statistics
Professional ACtivities and societies
American Statistical Association, Member.
Symposium for Data Science and Statistics, Outreach & Activities Chair 2024.
Journal of Data Science, Guest Editor 2025 Special Edition.
Awards
National Science Foundation's Mathematical Sciences Graduate Internship (MSGI), 2018. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. "Meet a Participant" Success Story.
Department of Defense's Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship, 2019 & 2020. Secretary of the Air Force Studies, Analysis, and Assessments, Pentagon.
Selected External Publications
Gierz K, Park K, Qiu P. Non-parametric treatment time-lag effect estimation. Statistical Methods in Medical Research. 2022;31(1):62-75. doi:10.1177/09622802211032693
Gierz, K., Park, K. Detection of multiple change points in a Weibull accelerated failure time model using sequential testing. Biometrical Journal. 2022; 64: 617– 634. https://doi.org/10.1002/bimj.202000262