The Section on Statistics in Epidemiology grants annual young investigator awards to new researchers for the best papers in statistics in epidemiology. Among the winners, the Breslow Award further recognizes the top paper.
biostatistics
Janet Wittes
Janet Wittes was leaning toward a major in biochemistry at Radcliffe College until faculty mentor John Edsall noted her preference for inference and guided her to statistics. In 1970, with two toddlers in tow, Wittes and her husband—physician Robert E. Wittes—moved to Bethesda, Maryland, where she worked part time as a postdoctoral researcher with Jerome Cornfield at The George Washington University and he served in the USPHS Commissioned Corps as a Yellow Beret. She founded a consulting firm, Statistics Collaborative, in 1990 and remains its president.
Sheila Macdonald Bird
Sheila Macdonald Bird’s father played mental arithmetic games with her when she was a child, which sparked her enthusiasm for math. And even though she has won numerous awards and her work has led to statistical guidelines for contributors to medical journals, some of her most enjoyable days have been spent absorbed in designing studies—especially when analysis leads to new insights with important implications for public health.
Usha Govindarajulu
Usha Govindarajulu was inspired by her father to pursue biostatistics—which combined her love for biology and statistics. Her research in cardiac device safety recently generated three first-author publications and, when FDA statisticians saw her research presented during the Joint Statistical Meetings, she was asked to advise them on her methods. Her research has also been featured on the radio program “Public Health Minute.”
Sherri Rose
Sherri Rose grew up in poverty and violence. Adjusting to college life was a struggle, but she was laser-focused on her courses in hopes of finding a path to a stable future. In fact, she was part of the first group of undergraduates in the Summer Institute for Training in Biostatistics (SIBS) at Boston University, which solidified her determination to earn a PhD. She is now associate professor at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the Health Policy Data Science Lab.
Two More Schools Create Master’s, Doctoral Data Science/Analytics Programs
Faculty at Washington University School of Medicine and Bowling Green State University answer questions about their graduate degree programs in data science.
UM Biostatistics Readies for 70th Anniversary
In celebration of its 70th anniversary, the University of Michigan Department of Biostatistics is organizing a symposium, titled “Biostatistics, Data Science, and Genomics,” in Ann Arbor May 15–16.
Lorin Crawford
While Lorin Crawford was writing his honors thesis on semigroup theory, he decided he no longer wanted to work on pure math problems but instead wanted to focus on more immediate real-world applications. Today, as RGSS Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at Brown University, his lab includes a mixture of postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate researchers in applied math, biostatistics, computational biology, and computer science. And even though his work earned him recognition as a member of The Root 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2019, the most rewarding part of his job to him is having the unique opportunity to mentor people with such diverse skill sets, thought patterns, and social backgrounds.
NERDS Workshop Fills Void
The New England Rare Disease Statistics (NERDS) Workshop filled a void for statisticians working to bring cures for rare diseases.
ASA to Cosponsor AI in Clinical Drug Development Symposium in May
The Pfizer/ASA/Columbia University Symposium on Risks and Opportunities of AI in Clinical Drug Development aims to advance the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in drug development and deployment.