Dooti Roy spent her weekends as a child in Kolkata working on puzzles and combinatorics and reading storybooks. She was introduced to statistics when she was 16 and enjoyed it so much that she earned a graduate fellowship to pursue her PhD in the US. Today, she works as a methodologist at Boehringer Ingelheim, Inc., where her days are spent learning, researching, and implementing statistical methods to make clinical trials more efficient. Even though her job is challenging, she learns constantly and solves meaningful and complex problems to help patients in need. Recently, she has been mentoring younger statisticians and actively volunteers her time on several ASA committees, including the Antiracism Task Force.
Kolkata
Joyee Ghosh
Joyee Ghosh had to choose between taking a statistics or biology course in high school. Because the thought of dissecting frogs terrified her, she chose statistics. Today, she is an associate professor in the department of statistics and actuarial science at the University of Iowa. When students ask her for career advice, she tells them they should follow their heart, work hard, and take things as they come.
Susmita Datta
Susmita Datta was born in Kolkata, India, where she attended an eclectic school for women that taught her science, literature, drama, and music. She contemplated whether to pursue a career in music or science, with her passion for science winning out and bringing her into the world of physics, followed by statistics. Susmita is widely published in peer-reviewed journals and currently serves on the editorial boards of Briefings in Bioinformatics and the IISA Springer book series.
Madhumita (Bonnie) Ghosh-Dastidar
Her family called Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar a human calculator when she was growing up, and it was her father who encouraged her to study computer science because it was the “future!” Eventually, Ghosh-Dastidar realized she wanted to do applied work and collaborate more so she turned to statistics. Currently, she works in health policy statistics and her first-authored article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine is listed on the journal’s website as one of the most downloaded papers.