Department of Biostatistics 
2005 Honors and Awards
(Click on each link below to read more)
Professor Michael Boehnke
The School of Public Health's Executive Committee has approved Michael Boehnke to be the School's fourth Collegiate Professor. The decision was based on Mike's extraordinary contributions in teaching, research, and service. Mike will vacate his current title of Pharmacia and Upjohn Foundation Research Professor to accept his new title.
Professor Robert Wolfe
Professor Robert Wolfe was awarded the SPH Excellence in Teaching Award, recognizing his many outstanding contributions in teaching and mentorship. This award is adjudicated by the School of Public Health Alumni Society Board of Governors. The award was presented at Convocation on April 29, 2005.
Mingyao Li
Mingyao Li is one of the recipients of this year's Cotterman Award. Mingyao's paper, "Joint Modeling of Linkage and Association: Identifying SNPs Responsible for a Linkage Signal", was chosen as one of the year's two best student papers published in the American Journal of Human Genetics (AJHG) from September 2004 - August 2005. The Cotterman Award is presented at the
American Association of Human Genetics (ASHG) annual meeting each year. This year's meeting is being held in October in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Mingyao is a recent PhD graduate and is continuing to work in our Department as a post-doctoral fellow.
Professor Roderick Little
Professor Roderick Little was awarded the esteemed Wilks Memorial Award by the American Statistical Association. The Wilks award was established in 1964 to honor the memory and distinguished career of Samuel S. Wilks by recognizing outstanding contributions to statistics that carry on in the spirit of his work. Recipients are selected based primarily on contributions (either recent or past) to the advancement of scientific or technical knowledge, ingenious application of existing knowledge, or successful activity in the fostering of cooperative scientific efforts that have been directly involved in matters of national defense or public interest. The award consists of a medal, a citation, and a cash honorarium.
Dr. Little also has the honor of presenting the American Statistical Association’s President’s Invited Address at the 2005 Joint Statistical Meetings in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His presentation will be on “A Bayes/Frequentist Roadmap”.
Professor Goncalo Abecasis
Professor Goncalo Abecasis has been honored with the prestigious Pew Fellowship awarded by the PEW Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences The Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences is designed to support young investigators of outstanding promise in the basic and clinical sciences relevant to the advancement of human health. One nomination is invited from the presidents of each of a limited number of institutions selected on the basis of the scope of their work in biomedical research, and which will be recommended to The Pew Trusts by the National Advisory Committee of the Program. The final awardees are then selected from these chosen few. An award of $60,000 per year will be provided to sponsoring institutions for use by the Scholar over a four-year period, subject to annual review of the Scholar's progress.
Sherry Teboe
Sherry Teboe was awarded the 2005 Excellence in Staff Service Award. This annual award is made to staff members that excel in their job within the School of Public Health. Sherry has spent the last 15 years of her 29 year tenure at the University of Michigan working for the Michigan Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. She started working with MADRC when the grant was initiated and her job has grown from Data Clerk to Computer Systems Specialist for the Center. She was recognized for her positive attitude, optimism, competence, and loyalty.
Distinguished Student Paper Award
At the 2005 Eastern North American Region (ENAR) Conference of the International Biometrics Society, several of our students received the Distinguished Student Paper Award. The ENAR Conference holds this competition for student papers annually. All winners receive a certificate, reimbursement for travel expenses, tuition for the short course of their choice, complimentary issues of the Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics (JABES) published during the past year, and an invitation to the President's Reception. What's even more impressive is that this year, out of the total 20 winners, 6 were from our Department! In addition, one of the winners, Adin Andrei was also the recipient of the Van Ryzin Award for the best paper submitted.
Please see below for a list of our Departments winners, the titles of their papers, and their dissertation advisors:
Adin-Cristian Andrei (Van Ryzin Award) - "Estimating the quality-of-life-adjusted gap time distribution of successive events subject to censoring"
Advisor: Susan Murray, Sc.D.
Wei Chen - "A Bayesian method for finding interactions in genomic studies"
Advisor: Debashis Ghosh, Ph.D.
Mingyao Li - "Joint modeling of linkage and association: identifying SNPs responsible for a linkage signal"
Advisor: Michael Boehnke, Ph.D.
Dawei Liu - "Semiparametric regression for high dimensional data with applications in microarrays: least squares kernel machines and linear mixed models"
Advisor: Xihong Lin, Ph.D.
Qi Long - "Causal inference in hybrid intervention trials involving treatment choice"
Co-advisors: Xihong Lin, Ph.D. and Roderick Little, Ph.D.
Ronglai Shen - "A two-stage mixture model for meta-analysis of microarray data"
Advisor: Debashis Ghosh, Ph.D.
Departmental Student Awards
Each year, the Biostatistics Department awards its students for outstanding achievements. The 2004-05 winners are:
Bill Frame and Wenjuan (Jessie) Gu for the Outstanding First-Year Masters in Biostatistics Award.
Yun (Mable) Li for Best Performance on the 2005 Qualifying Examination.
Laura Roede for the Outstanding GSI Award. |
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