Welcome to the Division of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of South Carolina.
What happens to children with diabetes when there isn’t enough food in the household? How can older individuals prevent falls? How can mothers reduce their risk of diabetes in pregnancy? These are some questions that our faculty are seeking to answer.
Epidemiologists design and conduct investigations aimed at improving the health of groups of people by combining knowledge from the social sciences, medicine, biology, the environment, and statistics. Epidemiologic studies provide evidence to inform recommendations for disease prevention, determine optimal treatments, and evaluate the effect of policies. The field is poised to rapidly grow in the future by harnessing developments in genetics, the microbiome, big data, and artificial intelligence to improve health. If you like biology, statistics, and computing, and want to make a difference to the health of large groups of people, epidemiology may be for you.
The Department of Epidemiology has 18 full-time faculty who are passionate about teaching and engaging with students. Students receive rigorous training to design and analyze epidemiologic studies and interpret and report their findings to scientific and public health communities through didactic and practical training. In addition to epidemiologic methods, the curriculum covers applied statistics, data management, and elective courses focused on substantive areas of epidemiology such as nutrition, cardiovascular disease, cancer, clinical trials, maternal and child health, infectious disease, environmental health, and social determinants of health.
Epidemiology is in high demand. Our graduates have taken up positions at top tier universities, the CDC, and the World Health Organization, academia, research, state and federal health departments, hospital systems, pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies, and non-profit organizations.
We offer eight advanced degrees in epidemiology and biostatistics. Each graduate degree has specific application deadlines and requirements.
With a passion for using data to guide the planning and design of health programs and evaluating the impact of public health interventions, Adrienne Parkinson accepted a position as a researcher with CARE following her May graduation.
Epidemiology assistant professor Mufaro Kanyangarara is one of 43 scholars to be awarded a Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship from the Institute of International Education this year.
With Zach Drechsler's full-time position as a laboratory researcher his priority, USC's 100 percent Online Master of Public Health in Epidemiology program offered the perfect path to pursuing a graduate degree in the field.
After winning the Outstanding Epidemiology Doctoral Student Award, Prince Addo plans to continue engaging in innovative epidemiologic research focused on modifiable risk factors for disease prevention and control.
After graduating with the Arnold School's 2024 Doctoral Achievement Award, Rajat das Gupta will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center to continue his training and research in molecular and genetic epidemiology in cancer.
Kersten Cope, Alicia Flach, Myriam Torres and Yanan Zhang were recognized by the Student Disability Resource Center with 2025 Two Thumbs Up Awards for going above and beyond to support students with disabilities.
Building on her previous research into maternal and infant health during pregnancy and after birth, epidemiology associate professor Nansi Boghossian has published new findings in JAMA.