Hongzhe Li
The American Statistical Association Philadelphia Chapter Award in Research Excellence acknowledges Dr. Li for his development of novel statistical methods or novel applications of existing statistical methods for analyzing genetic and genomic data. This work has led to substantial insights and breakthroughs in various diseases. His software package Demic is the only available computational method that estimate the bacterial growth rates based on genome assemblies, which allows microbiome researchers to investigate microbial community dynamics that include many new species without sequence data. Dr. Li has published in leading scientific journals, such as Science, Nature and the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Li has trained over 30 doctoral and post-doctoral students over his career, many of whom have gone on to prestigious careers of their own.
Dr. Li received his PhD in statistics in 1995 at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is Perelman Professor of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics and Professor of Biostatistics and Statistics in the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics (DBEI) at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
Dror Rom
The American Statistical Association Philadelphia Chapter Practice Award recognizes Dr. Rom for his contribution to the theory and methods for adjustment for multiple comparisons and for testing bioequivalence. These methods have been shared in many articles, books and software packages. He has also been an active sponsor of academic statistics at the undergraduate and graduate level. He has published many papers in prestigious journals including Biometrika and Statistics in Medicine.
Dr. Rom received his PhD in statistics at Temple University in Philadelphia in 1989 and has been a biostatistician in the pharmaceutical industry ever since. He is currently President and Chairman of Prosoft Clinical, which consults in biostatistics, data management and medical writing of clinical and preclinical studies.
Pallavi Chitturi
The American Statistical Association Philadelphia Chapter Practice Award for Teaching Excellence acknowledges Dr. Chitturi for her contributions including establishing Temple’s first undergraduate program in statistics in 2016, whose first students will be graduating this coming May. Her students are prepared for both the job market and graduate studies, and many have already secured positions as consultants and analysts. Dr. Chitturi helped charter the Temple University chapter of the ASA and serves as its faculty advisor. She also co-organizes the Annual Data Challenge Competition at Temple University for high school students in the Philadelphia area each year. She has chaired four dissertation committees at Temple and been a member of nineteen others.
Dr. Chitturi received her PhD in statistics at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003, and came directly to Temple.