Advancements in Cure Rate Modelling and Analysis of Multi-state Coherent Systems

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During the past six years, my research has primarily focused in the areas of Survival Analysis, Reliability Analysis,  Distribution Theory, Ordered Data Analysis and Stochastic Orderings. During  the next five years, I plan to pursue some outstanding problems in all these areas. SURVIVAL ANALYSIS: Due to the great advancements in the treatments of some diseases including  cancer and heart disease, a certain proportion of patients respond favourably to a treatment and may not show recurrence for a very long period of time.  They are referred to as "cured individuals" or "long-term survivors" meaning that they have reached a health stage wherein the disease is undetectable and would not recur  over a long  period.  For estimating this cure proportion, many flexible cure rate models and associated  inferential methods have been discussed in the literature.  In this project, I plan to develop a novel class of multi-stage destructive cure models to  model the possible destruction of cancerous cells that can happen at multiple times, for example, after the administration of each chemotherapy or radiation treatment.  I then plan to develop  inferential methods for such a multi-stage destructive cure model. RELIABILITY ANALYSIS:  Analysis of coherent system lifetime data has been studied extensively using the concept of "system signature". Efficient  inferential methods have  been developed for lifetime characteristics of systems and of components using signatures. But, most of these developments are on two-state systems (either up or down). Here, I plan to consider multi-state coherent systems with binary components and study the corresponding system signatures, ordered system signatures and their properties. I then plan to use them  to develop  inferential methods. DISTRIBUTION THEORY: Several bivariate and multivariate discrete distributions have been studied in the literature.   I plan to use the COM-Poisson model, general bivariate Poisson model and compounding to develop flexible  multivariate discrete distributions and also develop inferential methods for them. ORDERED DATA ANALYSIS AND STOCHASTIC ORDERINGS:  Recently various stochastic orderings have been discussed for minima and maxima from Proportional Hazards, Proportional Reversed Hazards and Scale families, and their application to claim amounts in Actuarial Science.  I plan to extend these results to general order statistics and also to generalize to dependent case. Anticipated Outcomes and Benefits to the Field and to Canada: Most post-docs and PhD students I supervised have taken up positions in many Universities, including Calgary, Manitoba, Waterloo, Ottawa and McMaster in Canada, and Purdue, Syracuse, Southern Methodist, Minnesota,  and Texas in USA.  Some others have joined Canadian companies such as Bombardier, BMO, Scotia Bank, CIBC, TD Bank, GE Capital, Rogers and Canadian Tire.  I anticipate the proposed research work to result in  similar outcomes and benefits.