NISS is very pleased to announce new board members whose terms will officially begin on July 1, 2021. New elected members to the NISS Board of Trustees include Nancy Potok, Aarti Shah and Eric Tchetchen Tchetchen. New members of the board serving as appointed Members of the NISS Corporation are Xuming He appointed by the IMS and Mahlet Tadesse appointed by ENAR. Please join NISS is welcoming our new board members! NISS is looking forward to the new ideas and energy that these new members will bring to help direct the work of NISS as it delivers high-impact research in science and in public policy and leverages the rich expertise of its staff with that of its base of affiliated organizations in academia, industry and government. Here is a brief bio-sketch of each of these individuals.
Nancy A. Potok is owner and CEO of NAPx Consulting. She has over 36 years of senior level experience in the public policy arena within the public, private and non-profit sectors. Her focus is on evidence-driven decision-making, program evaluation, social science research, risk management, mentoring, and organizational transformation. Among the many positions she has held, Nancy recently served as Chief Statistician of the United States; US Office of Management and Budget, Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Director; US Census Bureau, and Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Affairs; US Dept. of Commerce. She remains Adjunct Professor at The George Washington University Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration.
Aarti Shah is Senior Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer of Eli Lilly & Company, a global healthcare leader and a Fortune 500 company. She is an accomplished executive with 25+ years of extensive experience in drug development and commercialization, technology, cyber, digital transformation and data sciences. She is an agent of change and has successfully led large transformations with significant positive business outcomes. Aarti is a board member of Northwestern Mutual. She also serves on several non-profit boards. Aarti is known for her inspirational and genuine leadership style, and for leading global cross-functional teams from vision development to strategy creation to execution. She has held leadership roles in the U.S. and Australia.
Eric J. Tchetgen Tchetgen is Distinguished Professor of Statistics, in the Department of Statistics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Eric’s primary area of interest is in semi-parametric efficiency theory with application to causal inference, missing data problems, statistical genetics and mixed model theory. In general, he works on the development of statistical and epidemiologic methods that make efficient use of the information in data collected by scientific investigators, while avoiding unnecessary assumptions about the underlying data generating mechanism.
Xuming He received his PhD in Statistics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989. He joined the University of Michigan as H. C. Carver Collegiate Professor in 2011. His prior appointments include faculty positions at National University of Singapore and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Program Director of Statistics at National Science Foundation. His research interests include broad areas of robust statistics, semiparametric models, quantile regression, Bayesian inference, and subgroup analysis. His interdisciplinary research aims to promote the better use of statistics in biosciences, climate studies, concussion research, and social-economic studies.
Mahlet Tadesse is Professor and Chair in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Georgetown University. She received her doctorate in Biostatistics from Harvard University and served on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania as Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, prior to joining Georgetown University. She is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and a fellow of the American Statistical Association. Her research focuses on the development of statistical and computational tools for the analysis of large-scale genomic data. She is particularly interested in stochastic search methods and Bayesian inferential strategies to identify structures and relationships in high-dimensional data sets.
Board of Trustee members beginning a second term include Alyson Wilson and Nick Jewell.
NISS would also like to wholeheartedly thank the following individuals whose terms on the NISS Board of Trustees have come to an end. These include Raymond Bain, James Booth, Kate Crespi, Gabriel Huerta, Bhramar Mukherjee and Sam Woolford for all of the work and efforts they have contributed during their terms of service with NISS.