Christy Chuang-Stein

Education
PhD, Statistics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
BA, Mathematics, National Taiwan University

Christy Chuang-Stein grew up in an isolated city on the east coast of Taiwan. In the early 70s, the city was reachable from the capital by a bus ride lasting more than eight hours through a treacherous road winding through the mountains. The road was one-way traffic only. There was a half-way transfer area where traffic would switch directions at noon, but her family lived right next to the Pacific Ocean. They could watch sunrise over the ocean. The sounds of waves crushing onto the rugged shores were their constant companions. The sky was blue and the air was always clean. On nights when the moonlight shimmered over the dark ocean water, they loved listening to the old Chinese folklore stories about the Milky Way and the beautiful lady who lived on the moon for more than 4,000 years after stealing the pill of immortality from her warrior husband.

Both of Chuang-Stein’s parents were high-school teachers. Her mother taught math and history. Her dad taught biology and food processing. She remembers doing math lessons with her mother while other kids were playing outside. Yes, she resented the extra lessons at the time, but those lessons served her well. She became proficient at math and ended up majoring in it in college.

During Chuang-Stein’s junior year in college, math became too abstract for her. She wanted to see how it could be applied to solve real-world problems instead of proving theorems on manifolds and differential geometry. She took a year-long course in statistics and loved it. That led her to advanced training in statistics.

Chuang-Stein’s first job after graduate school was a joint appointment at the University of Rochester in upstate New York. Half her time was spent at the university’s cancer center and half was devoted to teaching. It didn’t take long for her to decide to spend all her time on biomedical research. In 1985, Chuang-Stein began her 30-year career in the pharmaceutical industry, one filled with excitement and satisfaction in getting new life-saving drugs to patients in need. Every day offered new hope that the next medical breakthrough might be just around the corner.

There have been many proud moments for statisticians working in the pharmaceutical industry. It is hard for Chuang-Stein to describe the sense of exhilaration when statisticians’ collective endeavors lead to profound improvements in people’s lives. In the 90s, she represented Pfizer (then Pharmacia) in presenting their HIV trial data at an FDA Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee meeting to review statistical evidence for using viral load as a surrogate for clinical outcome in assessing HIV treatments. The joint efforts of many resulted in an end to requiring clinical outcome trials for approving treatments for the primary HIV infection. It was a major regulatory policy change, speeding up the approvals of many HIV drugs in the last two decades.

Chuang-Stein has often been asked to give advice to young statisticians. She has three simple pieces to offer. First, seek out mentors and learn the value of asking for help. Second, develop resilience so you can bounce back after setbacks. Third, dare to dream high and take bold actions. She would also like to share the following two quotes that have influenced her greatly along her own journey:

– If you want to be a diamond, you need to be willing to be cut.
– A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.