Congratulations to the 2026 ACTStat award winners!
2026 Student Award winner Maliha Mehnaz Mitu, a PhD candidate in epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Kentucky, presented her paper, “Evaluating Missing Data Strategies for Interpretable Machine Learning in EHR-Based Prediction of Colorectal Cancer Screening,” on Sunday morning at the ACTStat Annual Meeting.
2026 Early Career Award winner Mingzhao Hu, assistant professor of biostatistics at the Mayo Clinic, presented “Absolute Risk in Alzheimer’s Disease: A Hidden
Markov Framework for Biological Severity, Death, and Dropout Bias” on Saturday afternoon at the ACTStat Annual Meeting.
The 2026 Student Award competition was organized by Alex Kaizer. The 2026 Early Career Award competition was organized by Phillip Schulte. (Click the competition names to view the 2026 guidelines. )
Past Recipients
2025
Early Career Award
Bryan Blette, PhD, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Assessing Informative Cluster Size in Cluster-Randomized Trials
Student Award
Alyssa Columbus, PhD candidate, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Schoool of Public Health
Repurposing Drugs, Rethinking Methods
2024
Early Career Award
Chixiang Chen, PhD, University of Maryland
The Effect of Alcohol Consumption on Brain Ageing: A New Causal Inference Framework for Incomplete and Massive Phenomic Data
Student Award
Souradipto Ghosh Dastidar, PhD candidate, University of Minnesota School of Public Health
Modern Problems Require Precise Solutions: Beating Traditional RCTs by Leveraging External Clinical Data and Adaptive Enrichment
2023
Early Career Award
Emily Slade, PhD, University of Kentucky
Considerations for Hiring and Training Collaborative Biostatisticians: Results from the Collaborative Biostatistician Survey
Student Award
Yuanzhi Yu, PhD candidate, Northwestern University
Multiple imputation for correcting measurement error
2022
Early Career Award
Sarah B. Peskoe, PhD, Duke University School of Medicine
Adjusting for selection bias due to missing data in electronic health records-based research
Student Award
Solvejg Wastvedt, PhD student, University of Minnesota
Predicting ACL surgery failure from registry data: A machine learning analysis of the Norwegian Knee Ligament
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2021
Early Career Awards
Alex Kaizer, PhD, University of Colorado Anschutz
A Sequential Basket Trial Design Based on Multi-Source Exchangeability with Predictive Probability Monitoring
Ryan Peterson, PhD, University of Colorado Anschutz
Urgent and effective prediction of intubation risk for patients with severe COVID-19: Development of an aggregated penalized regression coefficient after multiple imputation
Jacob M. Schauer, PhD, Northwestern University
Design and Analysis of Replication Studies: Considerations and Pitfalls
2019
Early Career Award
Gina-Maria Pomann, PhD, Duke University
A Two‐sample Distribution‐free Test for Functional Data with Application to a Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study of Multiple Sclerosis
2018
Early Career Award
Lauren C. Balmert, PhD, Northwestern University
Quantile Regression on Life Lost
2017
Junior Faculty Award
Jody Ciolino, PhD, Northwestern University
Handling Baseline Variables in the Design and Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials: An Illustration of the Gap between Statistical Theory and Practice
Student Award
Yiyi Chu, MS, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
BLAST: Bayesian Latent Subgroup Design for Basket Trials
2016
Junior Faculty Award
Ming Wang, PhD, Penn State College of Medicine
Student Award
Chengcheng Tu, MPH, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
2015
Junior Faculty Award
Baiming Zou, PhD, University of Florida
On Model Selections for Repeated Measurement Data in Clinical Research
Student Award
Lili Garrard, MS, University of Kansas Medical Center
Novel Method for Expediting the Development of Patient- Reported Outcome Measures