Source: UF College of Public Health & Health Professions
By Erin Jester
Ji-Hyun Lee, DrPH, is a statistician for the people.
Her work, she says, is not glamorous, but it’s as invaluable as it is invisible.
“I truly value every data point in my hand, because each one represents a patient’s story, struggle and journey,” Lee said. “It’s the key to understanding and improving lives.”
Lee, a professor in the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions’ Department of Biostatistics and associate director for Cancer Quantitative Sciences at the UF Health Cancer Center, became the 120th president of the American Statistical Association on Jan. 1.
She is the first Korean American statistician, the first woman statistician from Florida, and the first cancer center applied biostatistician in the history of the ASA presidency.
The ASA, founded in 1839 in Boston, is the largest professional group for statisticians and data scientists in the world, with more than 15,000 members in about 90 countries.
Lee has three goals for her presidency: enhancing the visibility of the profession, increasing opportunities for ASA members, and diversifying and expanding membership. To do that, Lee hopes to build strong, sustainable bridges between ASA and other professional organizations and institutions.
During her term as president-elect, ASA signed a memorandum of understanding with Nature Medicine, a journal that historically had no statisticians on its editorial board. The journal and ASA created a statistical editorial advisory board of 30 biostatisticians specializing in oncology, metabolic and infectious diseases. Lee is the statistical chief for the oncology sector of the board.
Six months in, Lee said the partnership is going well and will continue.
“I’m so, so happy and proud that we made it happen,” she said.
As one might expect, Lee’s list of achievements is long. With more than 20 years’ experience in cancer research, she is the author of more than 190 peer-reviewed articles and has held leadership roles in multiple professional organizations. Lee served on the ASA’s Council of Chapters governing board as a district vice chair, and on ASA’s Board of Directors for three years.
In 2017, she served as president of the Caucus for Women in Statistics, an international organization that supports and advances women statisticians’ careers. She was also a member of the Korean International Statistical Society’s Board of Directors from 2017 to 2022.
Lee grew up in a small, isolated town in South Korea. She did not have access to the internet at the time she was applying for master’s programs. Instead, she relied on Peterson’s Guide to Graduate and Professional Programs – a big book of colleges and universities.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill stood out to her for an unusual reason.
“I thought, oh, Chapel Hill, that sounds so beautiful,” she said. So, Lee moved to North Carolina and earned a master’s degree and then a doctorate in biostatistics.
Afterward, she spent 11 years at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, beginning as an assistant professor and eventually becoming a tenured full professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics. During that time, she also held professorships in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of South Florida College of Public Health at the University of South Florida College of Medicine.
For the next four years, Lee was the head of the Biostatistics Clinical Trials Group at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer. Although she fell in love with New Mexico’s epic landscape and its famous green Hatch chiles, she said she began to miss the East Coast. After interviewing with UF Health Cancer Center director Jonathan Licht, M.D., Lee said she intuitively knew UF was the right place for her under his leadership. She joined the biostatistics faculty in 2018.
But even with such a lengthy resume, Lee was shocked and nearly too intimidated to accept her nomination for the ASA presidency in 2022.
In addition to the increased workload that comes with such a position, she said her Korean heritage was another factor to consider. One colleague told her not to disclose her immigration story in her candidate statement. Another told her the ASA wasn’t ready to elect an Asian woman. But she harnessed her bravery.
“If I say no,” she said, “when would be the next time a person from that country is nominated?”
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