Biostatisticians and ASA Fellows Francesca Dominici and Xihong Lin of
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health were recently elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). Membership in the NAM is considered one of the highest honors
in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievements and commitment to service.
Dominici is professor of biostatistics, population, and data science and co-director of the Harvard Data Science Initiative (HDSI). As HSDI co-director, she
is helping to foster collaborations among data scientists at the university and catalyze research to benefit society and the economy. In her own research, she focuses on developing statistical methods for the analysis of large
and complex data sets. She leads several interdisciplinary groups of scientists working to address major questions in environmental health science, climate change, comparative effectiveness research in cancer, and health policy.
At Harvard, she has served as associate dean of information technology and senior associate dean for research.
Francesca Dominici (left) and Xihong Lin
Lin, professor of biostatistics, is globally recognized for her leadership and expertise in statistical genetics and genomics. Her research focuses
on the development and application of statistical and computational methods for analysis of high-throughput genetic and genomic data in epidemiological, environmental, and clinical studies; analysis of complex exposure and phenotype data
in observational studies; and statistical learning and inference for massive data. She is coordinating director of the Program in Quantitative Genomics, a school-wide
interdisciplinary program focused on the development and application of quantitative methods.
Among the other 83 newly elected members, John P.A. Ioannidis—professor of medicine, health research and policy, biomedical
data science, and statistics at Stanford University—and Bradley A. Malin—professor and vice chair of biomedical informatics and professor of biostatistics and computer science at Vanderbilt University—were also honored.
Ioannidis was honored for “his dedication to rigorous, reproducible, and transparent health science; for his seminal work on meta-research; for his calls for quality in evidence; and for the positive impact it has had on the reliability
and utility of scientific information throughout the sciences.” Malin was recognized for “contributions in natural language de-identification, guiding both national and international policies around research protection and
enabling broad sharing and reuse of health and social data at an unprecedented scale.”
Editor’s Note: The text about and photos of Dominici and Lin were sourced from a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health press release.