James O’Malley
ASA Fellow James O’Malley was recently appointed to the Peggy Y. Thomson Professorship in the Evaluative Clinical Sciences. O’Malley is a professor in The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice (TDI) and department of biomedical data science in the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine.
The first statistician to be the Peggy Y. Thomson professor, O’Malley will use the award to advance cutting-edge research at the intersection of statistics and health services research at Dartmouth.
O’Malley’s statistical research work includes social network analysis, hierarchical modeling, causal inference, and Bayesian analysis with problems of interest often being motivated by compelling and complex issues in health services and health policy. He holds a PhD and bachelor’s degree with honors in statistics from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and a master’s degree in applied statistics from Purdue University. Before coming to Dartmouth in 2013, O’Malley was a faculty member in the department of health care policy at Harvard Medical School.
The Peggy Y. Thomson Professorship was established in 1993 by Andrew Thomson Jr. and friends in honor of his wife.
Ron Fricker
Ron Fricker, interim dean of the college of science and professor of statistics at Virginia Tech, has been named vice provost for faculty affairs. Fricker has been at Virginia Tech for more than six years, during which time he served as head of the department of statistics before moving into an administrative role as senior associate dean in the college of science and, most recently, interim dean of the college. He has represented the college in Virginia Tech’s strategic planning effort and served as co-lead in developing the college of science’s strategic plan.
Prior to arriving at Virginia Tech in 2015, Fricker was a faculty member in the operations research department of the Naval Postgraduate School and, before that, a senior statistician at the RAND Corporation and associate director of the RAND National Security Research Division. His research focuses on performance of various statistical models for use in disease surveillance and statistical process control methodologies in general.
Fricker coauthored a book published at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Monitoring the Health of Populations by Tracking Disease Outbreaks: Saving Humanity from the Next Plague, which led to national and international appearances in media such as Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg News.
During the pandemic, Fricker applied his disease surveillance expertise with Laura Hungerford, head of the department of population health sciences, to co-lead a multidisciplinary team of Virginia Tech faculty, students, and analysts. For the past 18 months, the team has been building models to help the university understand how COVID-19 could affect the campus.
Fricker holds a PhD and a master’s degree in statistics from Yale University, a master’s degree in operations research from The George Washington University, and a bachelor’s degree from the United States Naval Academy. Upon graduation from the Naval Academy, he served as a surface warfare officer in the United States Navy. Fricker is a fellow of both the American Statistical Association and American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Most recently, he became a member of the National Academies’ Board on Mathematical Sciences and Analytics.
Three Win Student Travel Awards to Conference on Statistical Practice
The following student winners will receive registration and travel support to attend the Conference on Statistical Practice:
John J. Bartko Scholarship Award:
Steven T. Moen
University of Wisconsin
Moen is a PhD student of statistics at the University of Wisconsin and was a master’s student from The University of Chicago. He decided to study economics in college but especially the models and systems used in the field, which led him to statistics. His focus is on financial statistics and studying the theoretical aspects of time-dependent data.
Currently, Moen is collaborating with Russell Green, a senior economist at the International Monetary Fund, on a paper about the market microstructure of India’s sovereign bond market, which could help prevent another currency crisis.
Moen hopes to use his knowledge to pursue a career in which he can continue striving toward solving practical challenges, which he believes can be accomplished in both industrial and academic settings.
Lester R. Curtin Award:
Ransmond Berchie
University of Utah
Berchie is an aspiring biostatistician, pursuing a PhD in population health sciences with an emphasis in biostatistics at the University of Utah. Over the past year, he has collaborated with a variety of highly trained professionals on innovative projects, including leading analyses in the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease.
Berchie is the lead statistician on a paper titled, “The Association of Genetic West African Ancestry with Incident Cardiovascular Disease Among African Americans.” Upon returning from the Conference on Statistical Practice, he plans to organize a seminar to share what he has learned with his peers and mentors.
Lingzi Lu Memorial Award:
Shan Wu
University of Pittsburgh
Wu is a second-year master’s student in biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research work is on how to deal with the pandemic-related missing data in clinical trials.
Wu hopes to broaden her biostatistics perspective and network by visiting conferences in the field and meet and connect with experts. Her goal is to contribute to the betterment of humanity’s health care.
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