Statistical Advisory Panel

Nature Medicine has partnered with the American Statistical Association (ASA) to facilitate the timely, consistent, and thorough statistical peer review of clinical trials. The statistical advisory board is chaired by leading statisticians with ample experience in design, conduct and reporting of clinical research studies. They assist our in-house editorial team with the identification of appropriate topic-specific statistical peer reviewers, with a focus on diversity and inclusion, as well as with promoting reporting transparency, open data sharing and provision of constructive statistical feedback to authors. All editorial decisions are made by the journal's in-house editors.

Chief Statistical Advisors

Ji-Hyun Lee, MS DrPH
Department of Biostatistics, University of Florida

Dr. Ji-Hyun Lee is a Professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Florida and Associate Director for the Cancer Quantitative Sciences at the University of Florida Health Cancer Center (UFHCC). Her role at the UFHCC involves providing strategic leadership and direction, fostering rigorous and integrated research among Cancer Center scientists. Dr. Lee earned her master’s and doctorate in Biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the design and conduct of clinical trials, cluster/group randomized trials, methods for repeated measurements, and best statistical practices. As a lead statistician, she has played key roles in Biostatistical Cores for large programmatic grants, including Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE), National Cancer Institute (NCI) center core grants (P30), and program project grants (P50). She also serves on the scientific review and monitoring committee for UFHCC’s therapeutic clinical trials.

Dr. Lee is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and a certified professional statistician (PStat®) through the ASA. In 2023, Dr. Lee was elected as the 120th President of the ASA. She will serve as the ASA President-Elect in 2024 and as President in 2025

Natalie Dean, PhD
Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University

Dr. Dean is an Assistant Professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. She earned her PhD in Biostatistics from Harvard University and completed her postdoctoral work at the University of Florida. She was also a statistical consultant for the World Health Organization’s HIV Department. Before arriving at Emory, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida. Her areas of expertise are in infectious disease epidemiology and vaccine study design. Her research focuses on clinical trial and observational studies for evaluating vaccine efficacy, with a focus on emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola, Zika, and COVID-19.

Dr. Dean is the Principal Investigator of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant R01-AI139761 on vaccine study design for emerging infectious disease threats. She is a Co-Investigator on a cluster-randomized trial of Targeted Indoor Residual Spraying for the prevention of Aedes-borne disease in Mexico. She has been funded on other research activities supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. She received a 2020 Excellence Award for Assistant Professors from the Provost of the University of Florida and was selected to the 2022 COPSS Leadership Academy. Dr. Dean has been internationally recognized for her public engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Michele Guindani, PhD
Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health, UCLA

Dr. Guindani is a full professor in the Department of Biostatistics at UCLA. He received his Ph.D. degree in Statistics from Università Bocconi (Milan, Italy) in 2005 under the supervision of Sonia Petrone (Department of Decision Sciences, Universita’ Bocconi, Italy) and Alan E. Gelfand (Department of Statistical Sciences, Duke University). From 2005 to 2007, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, working with Peter Mueller and Gary L. Rosner. He obtained his first faculty position as an Assistant Professor in Statistics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of New Mexico (2007–2010). He then held a position as Assistant Professor (with the award of tenure) in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (2010-2016). From 2016 to June 2022, he was a Professor in the Department of Statistics of the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine (UCI).

He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA), and also a member of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), the International Statistical Institute (ISI), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Western North American Region (WNAR) of the International Biometrics Society.

 

Statistical Advisors
 

Laura Balzer, University of California, Berkeley

Lee Kennedy-Shaffer, Vassar College

Rui Wang, Harvard University

Volodymyr Minin, University of California, Irvine

Yang Yang, Professor of Statistics, University of Georgia 

Yunda Huang, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

Peng Wei, MD Anderson Cancer Center 

Qiwei Li, The University of Texas at Dallas

George Michailidis, University of California, Los Angeles 

Rhonda Bacher, University of Florida 

Liming Liang, Harvard University 

Judy Zhong, New York University 

Kim-Anh Do, MD Anderson Cancer Center

Cara Joyce, Loyola University Chicago

Xueliang Pan, Ohio State University

Qingzhao Yu, Louisiana State University Health-New Orleans

MinJae Lee, University of Texas Southwestern

Yingqi Zhao, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

Hui Zhang, Northwestern University

Naim Rashid, University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center

Michael Schell, Moffitt Cancer Center

Menggang Yu, University of Michigan

Yimei Li, University of Pennsylvania

Chen Hu, Johns Hopkins University

Maiying Kong, University of Louisville

Lili Tian, State University of New York at Buffalo

Li Tang, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Yu Shen, MD Anderson Cancer Center

Matthew Schipper, University of Michigan

Mithat Gonen, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Heidi Weiss, University of Kentucky

Nolan Wages, Virginia Commonwealth University