Affiliation: Research Statistician, RTI
Becky McNeil was born and spent her early years in rural Michigan. Her enchantment with statistics and mathematical modeling began during her undergraduate studies, when she learned about ecological models and population dynamics.
After completing a mathematics major and biology minor, she took a job in billing at a pharmacy that served long-term care facilities (nursing homes). This was her first exposure to raw data—the stories of health told by billing records—and those stories sparked a deep interest in using mathematical tools to improve health. Driven by that motivation, Becky attended graduate school with a focus on biostatistics and additional training in epidemiology and bioinformatics.
Her graduate training and experiences provided McNeil with the initial set of tools needed to begin building a career devoted to advancing human health by understanding the stories told by data. Over time, her toolkit has grown though experience on a variety of projects in different research settings, and she has shifted her role to include dimensions of research and network leadership in addition to biostatistical leadership.
In the big picture, McNeil considers a scientific achievement to be “great” by a simple metric: whether it advances knowledge in a way that makes peoples’ lives better.
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