ASA Community

HIGHLIGHTS FOR OUR RECENT AWARD RECIPIENTS
Research Excellence Award Dr. Rebecca Hubbard, a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania, was selected as the recipient of the 2023-2024 Research Excellence Award for her significant contributions to the development of innovative methods for the analysis of electronic health records (EHR) data that impacted the cancer care continuum including utilization, performance and outcomes of cancer screening tests. Through multiple funding from NIH, PCORI, and FDA, Dr. Hubbard’s work addresses the challenges arising from the timing and quality of EHR data collection such as misclassification and measurement error in exposures and outcomes. Her methods for estimating cumulative harms and benefits of cancer screening have been used in studies of breast and colorectal cancer screening conducted in Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Spain, and used by both the US Preventive Services Task Force and the American Cancer Society in developing updates to their breast cancer screening guidelines. Dr. Hubbard’s internationally-recognized expertise and leadership in her research, with >200 peer-reviewed publications, has led to invitations to serve on a national committee for the oncology quality and assessment, and editorial appointments in many high-impact journals (e.g., New England Journal of Medicine). As a long term member of ASA and Philadelphia Chapter, Dr. Hubbard is a Fellow of ASA, and the recipient of the 2020 ASA Health Policy Statistics Section’s Mid-Career Award, and the 2023 Gertrude M. Cox Award from the Washington Statistical Society and RTI International. Teaching Excellence Award Dr. Tom Ilvento is the recipient of the 2023-2024 Teaching Excellence Award for the College/University level. Dr. Ilvento is a Professor in the Applied Economics and Statistics Department at the University of Delaware where has in the past served as chair for nearly 17 years and is currently the Director of the MS in Applied Statistics program that he founded in 2016. His dedication to furthering statistics programs at the University of Delaware is well-recognized and lauded, including establishing statistics-related majors, minors, certificate programs, and graduate degrees, teaching 15 different courses – several of which he developed –, and creating an internship program that places over a dozen master’s students each year. As commented by one of his students in the letter supporting this nomination, Dr. Ilvento is not only an extraordinary statistics teacher with extreme passion and dedication but his greatness as a human being has impacted his life as a statistician. Additionally, he has many other contributions to statistics and science, including over 25 published papers in various applications and in education, a solo-authored book (“Statistics, Plain and Simple”), and more than 100 reports, proceedings, and newsletters in areas ranging from manufacturing to agriculture to statistics. Mr. Adam Shrager, a 20-year veteran teacher from Hopewell Valley Central High School, Pennington, NJ received the K-12 Teaching Excellence Award this year. He has been teaching AP statistics for about 10 years in his high school, where he started the program with only 12 students in 2004 and now the program has been expanded to four full sections with over 100 students. Mr. Shrager is passionate about teaching and learning statistics, and he does that in many creative and inspiring ways with his students. He also has actively taken statistics out of his classroom with events that draw participation from various student groups and local communities. Mr. Shrager has also been a long-term member and active presenter in the Philadelphia-Area Statistics Association (PASTA) since 2009 in which he presented topics on statistics pedagogy, mentored new teachers, and provided AP Statistics Exam reviews to students in the area. Mr. Shrager also has taught multiple statistics courses at Princeton University and The College of New Jersey. On the national levels, he serves in leadership roles at AP Statistics Reading, including Table Leader, Rubric Team Member and Question, as an AP Statistics instructor with Advance Kentucky, which is part of the National Math & Science Initiative, as a judge for the ASA National High School Statistics Competition Project for the past six years, and as a presenter at various conferences to share his experience in teaching AP Statistics. Practice Excellence Award Dr. Keavon Anderson is the recipient of the 2023-2024 Excellence in Statistical Practice Award. Currently, Dr. Anderson is an Associate Scientific Vice President of Methodology Research in Biostatistics at Merck. Over his three-decade-long career, Dr. Anderson has demonstrated a remarkable ability to address many challenges in the design and analysis of clinical trials by developing and implementing different statistical methodologies, including group sequential design, multiple testing, adaptive design, and time-to-event analyses when the traditional proportional hazards assumption is violated. For example, his contributions to group sequential design have been crucial in the development of immunotherapies such as Keytruda. Dr. Anderson also created the gsDesign software, a tool that helps implement group sequential designs effectively and is widely accessible in the pharmaceutical industry. His graphical multiplicity method also has been instrumental in optimizing not just oncology development programs, but also in many other therapeutic areas. His statistical methodology work and its applications have resulted in countless publications, book chapters, and invited presentations at many national and international conferences and workshops. As a long term member of ASA and Philadelphia Chapter, he has participated in many Chapter activities including giving a webinar in 2023. Dr. Anderson is an elected fellow of the ASA. Exceptional Student Achievement Award Mr. Gary Hettinger, a 4th-year doctoral student in Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania, is our Graduate Student Award recipient for 2023-2024. Gary has demonstrated strong academic performance including A+ or A grades in all courses, Penn’s Jonathan Raz Award for top written-qualifying exam score, and has already produced an impressive amount of scholarly work with at least 7 first-author manuscripts under review/in progress up to date in journals such as Biometrics, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series C. His dissertation research focuses on developing robust causal inference methods and applying them in public policy research or other disciplines. For example, Gary has been extending difference-in-differences methods to identify the causal effects of policy interventions under various spillover conditions, he also has developed doubly robust, influence-function based semiparametric estimators for the average treatment effect on the treated and the neighboring control. Beyond his studies, Gary has also been highly committed to service to his university and profession by serving in leadership roles in the graduate student assembly. He also volunteered as session chair in ENAR 2023, and as a statistical reviewer for multiple top journals.

HIGHLIGHTS FOR OUR RECENT AWARD RECIPIENTS

Research Excellence Award

Dr. Rebecca Hubbard, a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania, was selected as the recipient of the 2023-2024 Research Excellence Award for her significant contributions to the development of innovative methods for the analysis of electronic health records (EHR) data that impacted the cancer care continuum including utilization, performance and outcomes of cancer screening tests. Through multiple funding from NIH, PCORI, and FDA, Dr. Hubbard’s work addresses the challenges arising from the timing and quality of EHR data collection such as misclassification and measurement error in exposures and outcomes. Her methods for estimating cumulative harms and benefits of cancer screening have been used in studies of breast and colorectal cancer screening conducted in Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Spain, and used by both the US Preventive Services Task Force and the American Cancer Society in developing updates to their breast cancer screening guidelines. Dr. Hubbard’s internationally-recognized expertise and leadership in her research, with >200 peer-reviewed publications, has led to invitations to serve on a national committee for the oncology quality and assessment, and editorial appointments in many high-impact journals (e.g., New England Journal of Medicine). As a long term member of ASA and Philadelphia Chapter, Dr. Hubbard is a Fellow of ASA, and the recipient of the 2020 ASA Health Policy Statistics Section’s Mid-Career Award, and the 2023 Gertrude M. Cox Award from the Washington Statistical Society and RTI International.

Teaching Excellence Award

Dr. Tom Ilvento is the recipient of the 2023-2024 Teaching Excellence Award for the College/University level. Dr. Ilvento is a Professor in the Applied Economics and Statistics Department at the University of Delaware where has in the past served as chair for nearly 17 years and is currently the Director of the MS in Applied Statistics program that he founded in 2016. His dedication to furthering statistics programs at the University of Delaware is well-recognized and lauded, including establishing statistics-related majors, minors, certificate programs, and graduate degrees, teaching 15 different courses – several of which he developed –, and creating an internship program that places over a dozen master’s students each year. As commented by one of his students in the letter supporting this nomination, Dr. Ilvento is not only an extraordinary statistics teacher with extreme passion and dedication but his greatness as a human being has impacted his life as a statistician. Additionally, he has many other contributions to statistics and science, including over 25 published papers in various applications and in education, a solo-authored book (“Statistics, Plain and Simple”), and more than 100 reports, proceedings, and newsletters in areas ranging from manufacturing to agriculture to statistics.

Mr. Adam Shrager, a 20-year veteran teacher from Hopewell Valley Central High School, Pennington, NJ received the K-12 Teaching Excellence Award this year. He has been teaching AP statistics for about 10 years in his high school, where he started the program with only 12 students in 2004 and now the program has been expanded to four full sections with over 100 students. Mr. Shrager is passionate about teaching and learning statistics, and he does that in many creative and inspiring ways with his students. He also has actively taken statistics out of his classroom with events that draw participation from various student groups and local communities. Mr. Shrager has also been a long-term member and active presenter in the Philadelphia-Area Statistics Association (PASTA) since 2009 in which he presented topics on statistics pedagogy, mentored new teachers, and provided AP Statistics Exam reviews to students in the area. Mr. Shrager also has taught multiple statistics courses at Princeton University and The College of New Jersey. On the national levels, he serves in leadership roles at AP Statistics Reading, including Table Leader, Rubric Team Member and Question, as an AP Statistics instructor with Advance Kentucky, which is part of the National Math & Science Initiative, as a judge for the ASA National High School Statistics Competition Project for the past six years, and as a presenter at various conferences to share his experience in teaching AP Statistics.

Practice Excellence Award

Dr. Keavon Anderson is the recipient of the 2023-2024 Excellence in Statistical Practice Award. Currently, Dr. Anderson is an Associate Scientific Vice President of Methodology Research in Biostatistics at Merck. Over his three-decade-long career, Dr. Anderson has demonstrated a remarkable ability to address many challenges in the design and analysis of clinical trials by developing and implementing different statistical methodologies, including group sequential design, multiple testing, adaptive design, and time-to-event analyses when the traditional proportional hazards assumption is violated. For example, his contributions to group sequential design have been crucial in the development of immunotherapies such as Keytruda. Dr. Anderson also created the gsDesign software, a tool that helps implement group sequential designs effectively and is widely accessible in the pharmaceutical industry. His graphical multiplicity method also has been instrumental in optimizing not just oncology development programs, but also in many other therapeutic areas. His statistical methodology work and its applications have resulted in countless publications, book chapters, and invited presentations at many national and international conferences and workshops. As a long term member of ASA and Philadelphia Chapter, he has participated in many Chapter activities including giving a webinar in 2023. Dr. Anderson is an elected fellow of the ASA.

Exceptional Student Achievement Award

Mr. Gary Hettinger, a 4th-year doctoral student in Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania, is our Graduate Student Award recipient for 2023-2024. Gary has demonstrated strong academic performance including A+ or A grades in all courses, Penn’s Jonathan Raz Award for top written-qualifying exam score, and has already produced an impressive amount of scholarly work with at least 7 first-author manuscripts under review/in progress up to date in journals such as Biometrics, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series C. His dissertation research focuses on developing robust causal inference methods and applying them in public policy research or other disciplines. For example, Gary has been extending difference-in-differences methods to identify the causal effects of policy interventions under various spillover conditions, he also has developed doubly robust, influence-function based semiparametric estimators for the average treatment effect on the treated and the neighboring control. Beyond his studies, Gary has also been highly committed to service to his university and profession by serving in leadership roles in the graduate student assembly. He also volunteered as session chair in ENAR 2023, and as a statistical reviewer for multiple top journals.

Award Recipients Highlights