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URochester Medicine / Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology / People & Research / Faculty / Sally W. Thurston, PhD

Sally W. Thurston, PhD

Sally ThurstonProfessor of Biostatistics
Professor of Environmental Medicine
Ph.D., Harvard University 

Contact Information

University of Rochester
Dept of Biostatistics and Computational Biology
265 Crittenden Boulevard, CU 420630
Rochester, New York 14642-0630
 
Office: Saunders Research Building 4145
Phone: (585) 275-2406
E-mail: Sally_Thurston@urmc.rochester.edu

Research Interests

Much of my statistical research is motivated by problems arising in environmental and occupational health. Research interests include Bayesian inference, modeling multiple outcomes, correction for measurement error bias, informative prior specification, latent variable models, hierarchical models, models for multiple correlated exposures, and environmental health applications.

I collaborate with many investigators in the Department of Environmental Medicine and direct the Biostatistics Core of Rochester’s Environmental Health Sciences Center. One of my major collaborations is with the Seychelles Child Development Study, which examines the associations between prenatal and postnatal mercury exposure from maternal fish consumption and multiple outcomes in childhood and adolescence. Other major collaborations examine associations between air pollution and health outcomes in Beijing, China and Rochester, NY, and associations between endocrine disrupting chemicals and gender-specific outcomes in pregnant women and children. I am the Principal Investigator for our Department’s T32 grant "Training in Environmental Health Biostatistics”. 

I received an A.B. in Biology from Oberlin College, an M.S. in Natural Resources from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in Statistics from Harvard University. Prior to coming to Rochester in 2002, I was a postdoctoral fellow and then a research associate in Biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health. I am a member of the American Statistical Association and the International Biometric Society. I was elected a member of the International Statistical Institute in 2006, and was elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2019. In 2016 I received the Outstanding Graduate Course Director Award for my teaching of Advanced Bayesian Inference, and in 2022 I received the Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring Award; both are awards from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. 

Full List of Publications

My most recent and complete publication list can be found here.

Selected Publications

*PhD student or postdoctoral trainee

Methodology

  • Sharghi S*, Stoll KE, Thurston SW, Barrett E, Johnson B. Implementing empirical likelihood within the causal inference framework to study causal effects of air pollution on reproductive development, Statistical Methods in Medical Research, 2026, 35(5), 109-1142(S).

  • Thurston SW, Ruppert D, Korrick SA (2025). A Novel Approach to Assessing the Joint Effects of Mercury and Fish Consumption on Neurodevelopment in the New Bedford Cohort, American Journal of Epidemiology, 194 (1), 172-184. 

  • Duttweiler LP*, Thurston SW, Almudevar A (2023). Spectral Bayesian Network Theory, Linear Algebra and Its Applications, 674: 282-303.

  • Weisenthal SJ*, Thurston SW, Ertefaie A. (2023). Relative Sparsity for Medical Decision Problems, Statistics in Medicine, 42 (18):3067 - 3092.

  • Zavez AE*, McSorley EM, Yeates AJ, Thurston SW (2023).  A Bayesian partial membership model for multiple exposures with uncertain group memberships, Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics, doi.org/10.1007/s13253-023-00528-3

  • Thurston SW, Harrington D, Mruzek DW, Shamlaye C, Myers GJ, van Wijngaarden E (2022). Development of a long-term time-weighted exposure metric that accounts for missing data in Seychelles Child Development Study, Neurotoxicology, 92:49-60.

  • Zavez, AE.*, McSorley, E., Yeates, A., & Thurston, S.W. (2022). Modeling the effects of multiple exposures with unknown group memberships: a Bayesian latent variable approach. Journal of Applied Statistics, 49(4):831-857.

  • LaLonde, A.*, Love, T., Thurston, S. W., & Davidson, P. W. (2020). Discovering structure in multiple outcomes models for tests of childhood neurodevelopment. Biometrics, 76(3):874-885.
  • Xiao, L.*, Thurston, S.W., Ruppert, D., Love, T.M.T., & Davidson, P.W. (2014). Bayesian models for multiple outcomes in domains with application to the Seychelles Child Development Study. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 109:1-10.
  • Thurston, S.W., Ruppert, D., & Davidson, P.W. (2009). Bayesian Models for Multiple Outcomes Nested in Domains. Biometrics, 65(4):1078-1086. PMCID:  PMC3031784.

Environmental Health

  • Groth, S.W., Thurston, S.W., O’Connor, T.G. Kinkade C, Kautz A, Meng Y, Brunner Y, Shi H, Block R, Fernandez ID, Barrett E. (2026). Timing of gestational weight gain in relation to weight retention and body composition at 6- and 12 -months postpartum. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. Https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-026-09948-8. 

  • Barrett E, Skrill D*, Zhou E, Thuston SW, Girardi T, Brunner J, Liang H-W, Miller RK, Salafia CM, O’Connor TG, Adibi JJ. (2025). Prenatal exposure to phthalates and phthalate replacements in relation to chorionic plate surface vasculature in healthy term pregnancies, Science of the Total Environment, 2025, 958, 178116.

  • Kahwaji M, Duttweiler L*, Thurston SW, Harrington D, Miller RK, Murphy SK, Wang C, Brunner J, GE Y, Lin Y, Hopke PK, O’Connor TG, Zhang JJ, Rich DQ, Barrett ES. (2025). Gestational exposure to PM2.5, NO2, and sex steroid hormones: identifying critical win-dows of exposure in the Rochester UPSIDE Cohort. Environmental Epidemiology, 9(1), e361.

  • Klus JK*, Thurtston SS, Myers G, Watson GE, Rand MD, Love TM, Yeates AJ, Mulhern MS, McSorley EM, Strain JJ,Shamlaye C, van Wijngaarden E. (2023). Postnatal methylmercury exposure and neurodevelopmental outcomes at 7 years of age in the Seychelles Child Development Study Nutrition Cohort 2, Neurotoxicology 99:115-119.

  • Thurston SW, Myers G, Mruzek D, Harrington D, Adams, H, Shamlaye C, Van Wijngaarden E (2022). Associations between time- weighted postnatal methylmercury exposure from fish consumption and neurodevelopmental outcomes through 24 years of age in the Seychelles Child Development Study Main Cohort, Neurotoxicology, 91:234-244. 


Last updated: October 2026