L. Adrienne Cupples Award Presented to University of Michigan Professor.
On April 2, the Department of Biostatistics presented the L. Adrienne Cupples Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research, and Service in Biostatistics to Bhramar Mukherjee, John D. Kalbfleisch Collegiate Professor and chair of biostatistics at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
Mukherjee gave her presentation, titled “The Battle of Two Cultures: Statistics versus (?) Data Science,” via Zoom, with an audience of over 80 students and faculty from SPH’s Department of Biostatistics. The talk introduced the rapidly-developing field of data science and how this field interacts with statisticians and computer scientists, with examples of new statistical methods to understand the structure and corrections of bias in sampling and misclassification in big data—for example, electronic medical records. She also discussed a recently derived expression to examine how parameters of a theoretical statistical model are linked to the parameters of a biased model.
She concluded her talk by describing her research on reproductive health and pregnancy outcomes in India. She shared her passion for this research, and urged students in the audience to find meaningful work to apply their newly-acquired biostatistics skills. Watch her presentation here.
The annual L. Adrienne Cupples Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research, and Service in Biostatistics recognizes a biostatistician whose academic achievements reflect the contributions to biostatistics exemplified by L. Adrienne Cupples, professor of biostatistics and epidemiology, the award’s first recipient.
Cupples came to SPH in 1981 and served as the founding chair of the Department of Biostatistics and co-executive director of the Graduate Program in Biostatistics. During her time at SPH, she has advanced the field of biostatistics through more than 600 publications in major journals and book chapters on collaborative and methodological research, development and effective teaching of a wide range of biostatistics courses, and mentorship of numerous graduate students and faculty.