Xiangrong Kong, PhD

Dr. Xiangrong Kong is Akef El-Maghraby Professor in Preventive Ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute and holds joint appointments in the Departments of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Health, Behavior, and Society in the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Kong received her PhD in Biostatistics from the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University. She then joined the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health as a research faculty member and received further training in Global Health, Behavioral Sciences, and Retinal Degenerations and Clinical Electrophysiology.

Dr. Kong is Director of the Wilmer Biostatistics Center and Director and Biostatistician of the Coordinating Center of international multi-center studies on inherited retinal diseases, including NAC Attack, a phase-3 clinical trial in retinitis pigmentosa, and a natural history study on the Progression of Atrophy Secondary to Stargardt Disease (ProgStar). She leads on study design, regulatory compliance, study logistics,  administrative and finance operations, and scientific conceptualization and analyses in the studies.

A main methodological focus of Dr. Kong’s work, as reflected in the NAC Attack trial, concerns outcome measure selection in slow-progressing retinal diseases and developing clinical trial designs following the Estimand Framework in the ICH E9 (R1) Statistical Principles for Clinical Trials. 

Dr. Kong has also worked on a broad range of clinical ophthalmic studies, including genetic retinal degeneration, ocular neuroretinal measurements, myopia, and low vision rehabilitation. 

In other areas, Dr. Kong has worked on program impact evaluation for assessing the population level impact of scale-up of HIV preventive interventions on the HIV epidemic in South Uganda. She also has training and research experience in developing, evaluating, and implementing social and behavioral sciences approaches for promoting health behaviors. Dr. Kong’s research interests in biostatistical methodology include correlated data analysis, longitudinal data analysis, survival analysis, measurement error models, and power and sample size calculations.