Dionne Price, the first African-American president of the American Statistical Association, passed away on February 24, 2024.
Born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, Price developed a love for applied mathematics early in life. When she was awarded a scholarship through the Dozoretz National Institute for Minorities in Applied Sciences at Norfolk State University, she embraced the opportunity. As part of the program, students were strongly encouraged to pursue summer internships. Price spent one of those summers in the biostatistics unit at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke—an experience that sparked her passion for biostatistics.
She went on to complete graduate studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Emory University before beginning her career at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). At the FDA, she provided leadership to statisticians developing and applying methods for regulating anti-infective, antiviral, ophthalmology, rare disease, urology, and reproductive drug products. Her research interests focused on the design and analysis of clinical trials, and she co-authored papers published in journals such as Statistics in Medicine, Clinical Trials, and Statistics in Biopharmaceutical Research.
Price led collaborative, cross-cutting efforts across the FDA to promote the use of complex innovative trial designs in pharmaceutical drug development. Her blend of technical expertise, policy insight, and effective communication earned her invitations to speak at national and international conferences as a keynote speaker, panelist, and invited expert.
A committed member of the statistical community, Price was active in the International Biometric Society (IBS), the American Statistical Association (ASA), and the FDA Statistical Association. She served as chair of the ASA’s Biopharmaceutical Section—home to more than 2,000 members—and served on the Regional Advisory Board and Regional Committee of the Eastern North American Region (ENAR) of IBS. She was named an ASA Fellow in 2018 and later elected vice president of the ASA.
As a plenary speaker at the 2019 Women in Statistics and Data Science conference, Price gave a memorable talk titled “Honor the Past, Celebrate the Present, and Envision the Future.” She concluded by sharing a poem she had written—though she humbly noted she did not consider herself a poet:
The Journey
I am that woman and that woman is me,
Acquiring knowledge, I’ve learned is the key,
I stand on the foundation planted long ago,
I’m rooted in numbers and love how they flow
Now is the present and data abounds,
Quantitative inclinations will need to astound,
And as we look to tomorrow and days to come,
May we solve global challenges, and still have some fun.
I am that woman and that woman is me.
To read more, visit “Remembering Dionne Price with Her Own Wise Words”
Leave a Reply