Dr. Ming-Hui Chen, University of Connecticut

Dr. Ming-Hui Chen is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Statistics at the University of Connecticut (UConn). He was elected to Fellow of International Society for Bayesian Analysis in 2016, Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2007, Fellow of American Statistical Association in 2005. He also received the University of Connecticut AAUP Research Excellence Award in 2013, the UConn College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) Excellence in Research Award in the Physical Sciences Division in 2013, the University of Connecticut Alumni Association's University Award for Faculty Excellence in Research and Creativity (Sciences) in 2014, and ICSA Distinguished Achievement Award in 2020. He has published over 428 statistics and biostatistics methodological and medical research papers in mainstream statistics, biostatistics, and medical journals. He has also published five books including two advanced graduate-level books on Bayesian survival analysis and Monte Carlo methods in Bayesian computation. He has supervised or been supervising 37 PhD students. He served as President of the International Chinese Statistical Association (ICSA) in 2013, Program Chair and Publication Officer of SBSS of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the ASA Committee on Nomination for 2016-2017 to nominate candidates for ASA President/Vice President. Currently, he serves as the 2022 JSM Program Chair, Past President of the New England Statistical Society (nestat.org), Co Editor-in-Chief of Statistics and Its Interface, inaugurated Co Editor-in-Chief of New England Journal of Statistics in Data Science, and an Associate Editor of JASA, JCGS, and LIDA.

Dr. Kun Chen, University of Connecticut

Kun Chen is a Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Connecticut (UConn) and a Research Fellow at the Center for Population Health, UConn Health Center. He has been a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) since 2022 and an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) since 2016. His research mainly focuses on large-scale multivariate statistical learning, statistical machine learning, and healthcare analytics. He has extensive interdisciplinary research experience in several fields, including ecology, biology, agriculture, and population health. Dr. Chen has graduated with over ten PhDs and received Recognition for Teaching Excellence at UConn multiple times. He has also been active in professional services. In particular, he was a core member in establishing the New England Statistical Society (NESS) in 2017 and served as its secretary until 2021. Currently, he serves as the Program Chair for the ASA Section on Statistical Computing and Vice-President for the ASA Connecticut Chapter.

Dr. Chen received his B.Econ. in Finance and Dual B.S. in Computer Science & Technology from the University of Science & Technology of China in 2003, M.S. in Statistics from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2007, and Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Iowa in 2011. Before joining UConn, he was on the faculty of Kansas State University from 2011 to 2013.

Dr. Jeff Palmer, Pfizer

Jeff Palmer has been a statistics group head leading early clinical development in rare diseases at Pfizer for the past 5 years. Prior to Pfizer he had worked for over ten years with various other pharma and consulting companies supporting mainly rare diseases, oncology, and neurology. Jeff received his MS in statistics from the University of Chicago and conducted his doctoral research in statistics at Carnegie Mellon University.

Dr. Yang Song, Neurocrine Biosciences

Dr. Yang Song is Vice President of Analytics and Data Sciences at Neurocrine Biosciences in San Diego, where he leads a multidisciplinary department spanning biostatistics, statistical programming, data management, and epidemiology & RWE analytics. From 2016 to 2024, he served as Executive Director and Head of the Biostatistics Group for Pipeline Development at Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston. In this role, he oversaw biostatistical support for multiple industry leading drug development programs, including renal diseases, Nav1.8 in pain, and CRISPR gene editing in hematology. During his tenure at Vertex, he co-founded the NERDS workshop series with community leaders in industry and academia, led the organization of the first two workshops, and introduced the “NERDS” acronym that has represented the event since 2019. Earlier in his career, Dr. Song held positions of increasing responsibility at Merck and Johnson & Johnson, with experience across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Beijing, supporting global drug development across diverse therapeutic areas. He earned his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Dr. Rui (Sammi) Tang, Astellas

Dr. Rui (Sammi) Tang is a seasoned drug developer and innovative pharmaceutical leader who has contributed to the successful development and approval of numerous therapies—bringing medicines from research to market that now reach millions of patients every day. With a proven track record of building high-performing teams and driving scientific and operational innovation, she delivers data-driven solutions that accelerate drug development and improve global health outcomes. As Senior Vice President and Global Head of Quantitative Sciences and Evidence Generation (QSEG) at Astellas Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Tang leads the company’s global data and evidence strategy across quantitative analytics, epidemiology, real-world evidence (RWE), biostatistics, programming, medical writing, scientific communication, data systems & enablement, and data management. She is at the forefront of applying Generative AI in regulatory and clinical documentation, AI/ML-powered analytics, and external data to optimize study design and development efficiency.

She also serves as Site Head of the Astellas Life Sciences Center (ALSC) in Cambridge, where she oversees full site operations and strategic direction across integrated teams including Research, Medical & Development, Business Development, and IT. Under her leadership, the ALSC drives innovation through internal collaboration and external partnerships with incubator labs, biotech start-ups, and academic institutions. A dedicated scientific leader, Dr. Tang serves on the Executive Committee for Data Science & AI at the American Statistical Association (ASA) and is co-founder of DahShu, a global nonprofit advancing data science research and education with over 5,000 members. Previously, Dr. Tang was Vice President and Global Head of Biometrics at Servier Pharmaceuticals and Therapeutic Area Head of Biostatistics at Shire. Earlier in her career, she contributed to drug development and statistical innovation at Vertex, Amgen, Mayo Clinic, and Merck—experiences that shaped her cross-functional leadership approach. Dr. Tang holds a PhD in Statistical Genetics from Michigan Technological University and an Executive MBA from MIT Sloan. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Yale University School of Public Health. With over 50 peer-reviewed publications and multiple patents, she is widely recognized for combining scientific depth with strategic leadership to deliver transformative therapies that improve lives worldwide.

Dr. Richard Zhang, Travere Therapeutics

Richard Zhang is Executive Director and Head of Biostatistics at Travere Therapeutics. A strategic biometrics leader with more than 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, he has driven clinical data strategy, regulatory success, and global team leadership across therapeutic areas including rare diseases, neuroscience, pain, and rheumatology. Prior to joining Travere, Richard served as Statistics Group Head for multiple rare disease portfolios, including Endocrine, Cardiac, and Nephrology, at Pfizer. Throughout his career, Richard has contributed to hundreds of clinical trials and has a proven track record supporting successful NDA, BLA, and MAA approvals. Richard earned his PhD in Statistics from the University of Kentucky.

Dr. Zhaoyang Teng, Astellas

Dr. Zhaoyang Teng, Senior Director of Biostatistics, currently leads the Medical Affairs Statistical Science team at Astellas. He brings extensive expertise across all phases of drug development (Phases I–III) and post-marketing activities, including global regulatory and HTA submissions, HEOR, market access, and global medical affairs. Before joining Astellas, Dr. Teng served as Senior Director of Biostatistics at Servier, where he led the LCM Biostatistics team for oncology—covering HEOR, Market Access, GMPA, and RWE analytics—as well as the APAC Biostatistics team based in Beijing, China. He also held positions at Takeda Pharmaceuticals earlier in his career. Dr. Teng received his PhD in Biostatistics from Boston University. His research interests include adaptive and seamless Phase 2/3 study designs, biomarker-driven designs, model-based meta-analysis, multi-regional clinical trials, enrollment prediction, indirect treatment comparisons (ITC), quantitative benefit-risk analysis, and the application of AI in drug development. He is an active member of several professional statistical communities, including ASA, BCASA, NESS, ICSA, Stat4Onc, SIP, NERDS and DISS, contributing to the advancement of the field and organizing local and global events.

Dr. Mary Lai Salvana, University of Connecticut

Mary Lai Salvana is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Connecticut (UConn). Prior to joining UConn, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Mathematics at University of Houston. She received her Ph.D. in Statistics at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. She obtained her BS and MS degrees in Applied Mathematics from Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines, in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Her research interests include extreme and catastrophic events, risks, disasters, spatial and spatio-temporal statistics, environmental statistics, computational statistics, large-scale data science, and high-performance computing.

Dr. Ran Duan, Vertex

Ran Duan is currently the Director of biostatistics at Vertex Pharmaceuticals oversee multiple indications. Before join Vertex, Ran worked at Angitia, Alexion, AstraZeneca Rare Disease and Eli Lilly and Company, where she supported the clinical development in multiple therapeutic areas including Bone disease, neurology, ophthalmology, and diabetes programs. She is an active member of the ASA Gene and Cell therapy working group. Her research interests include the innovative trial design for gene and cell therapy, rare disease, RWE generation and digital solutions for health care.

Dr. Ying Zhou, University of Connecticut

Ying Zhou is an Assistant Professor of Statistics at the University of Connecticut. Before joining UConn, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania from 2023 to 2024. She received her Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on methodological and applied challenges in causal inference, particularly those arising from complex data structures.

Dr. Frank Fan, BMS

Dr. Yuna Wu, Galderma

Yu (Yuna) Wu, Ph.D., is the Global Head of Biometrics and Data Management at Galderma, where she leads global biometrics and data management functions supporting clinical development programs worldwide. She brings more than 19 years of pharmaceutical industry experience across Phase I–IV clinical development, regulatory submissions, and post-marketing research. Dr. Wu is an innovative biometrics leader with expertise in adaptive trial designs, Bayesian methodologies, estimand strategies, real-world evidence integration, and advanced statistical approaches for complex clinical development programs. She is particularly passionate about leveraging innovative methodologies, data-driven insights, and emerging technologies to improve development efficiency, strengthen evidence generation, and accelerate patient-focused drug development. Dr. Wu holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Statistics from Iowa State University and a B.S. in Statistics from the University of Science and Technology of China.

Dr. Larry Han, Northeastern University

Larry Han is an Assistant Professor at Brown University, jointly appointed in the Department of Biostatistics and Brown Data Science Institute, and an Affiliate Investigator in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center. He was previously an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University. His research focuses on developing novel statistical and machine learning methods to leverage real-world data to improve decision-making, with a focus on public health and clinical medicine. His current areas of interest include causal inference, conformal inference, data integration, federated learning, and survival analysis. He serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Causal Inference and Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biostatistics from Harvard University, working with Tianxi Cai, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Sharon-Lise Normand at the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard.

Dr. Xin Wang, AbbVie

Dr. Xin Wang is Senior Director, Statistics TA Head in Rheumatology at AbbVie. Xin received her Ph.D. in Statistics from Northwestern University. Xin is a motivated statistician and Team Leader with 18 years of drug development experience in pharmaceutical companies including AbbVie, BMS, Pfizer and Sanofi. She has extensive and unique cross TA experience spanning Cell Therapy, Hematology and Immunology, with a proven track record of leading 10+ successful NDA/sNDA/sBLA submissions and approvals developing best-in-class treatments including Breyanzi (CAR-T) and Rinvoq (Immunology). Her research interest includes multiple comparisons, gatekeeping procedures, dose-finding, missing data imputations, and adaptive designs.

Dr. Cong Han, Astellas

Cong Han is Vice President of Clinical Biometrics at Astellas Pharma Global Development, where he leads a global organization encompassing statistical science, statistical methodology and innovation, statistical programming and computing, clinical modeling and analytics, and safety data science. He earned his PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Minnesota and previously served as a biostatistics faculty member at the University of Washington. With more than 20 years of industry experience, he has held leadership roles at Takeda, Novartis Gene Therapies, and Astellas, contributing to programs across gastroenterology, cardiorenal and metabolic diseases, women’s health, ophthalmology, vaccine development, and cell and gene therapy development.

Dr. Susie Sinks, Biogen

Dr. Susie Sinks is currently a Director in Development Statistics at Biogen, where she has served as program lead in neuromuscular, multiple sclerosis and immunology therapeutic areas. Before joining Biogen in 2019, Susie worked in the FDA over 5 years for the Division of Metabolic and Endocrinology Products (DMEP) with specialty in diabetes and metabolic statistical review after receiving a Ph.D. in Biostatistics from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research interests include missing data, surrogacy modeling, benefit and risk assessment.

Dr. Zhichao Sun, Boehringer Ingelheim

Dr. Xiang Zhang, CSL Behring

Dr. Ally He, Hemab Therapeutics

Dr. Chunpeng Fan, Insmed

Dr. Chunpeng Fan is currently Executive Director of Biostatistics at Insmed, where he has served as Head of Statistical Innovations and program lead for multiple development projects in respiratory, immunology, and inflammation since joining the company in 2023. Prior to Insmed, he spent more than 16 years at Sanofi in roles of increasing responsibility, including serving as program lead for Dupixent. Chunpeng has extensive clinical development experience across all stages of drug development, from pre-IND through global NDA/MAA submissions and regulatory approvals. His research interests include clinical trial design and analysis methodologies, binary and count data analysis, generalized linear mixed models, generalized estimating equations (GEE), and rank-based methods. Chunpeng earned his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Dr. Wei Hou, Neurocrine Biosciences

Dr. Yingwen Dong, Roche/Genentech

Yingwen Dong is the Head of Biostatistics in CVRM at Roche/Genentech. Prior to this role, she served as the Global Head of Biostatistics in Rare Diseases and Rare Blood Disorders at Sanofi. She has over 18 years of clinical development experience in the pharmaceutical industry across multiple therapeutic areas, including neurology, oncology, rare diseases, rare blood disorders, and CVRM. Her research interests focus on innovative clinical trial design and its application. She currently serves as Program Chair-elect for the ASA Biopharmaceutical Section and as a senior advisor for the 2026 Regulatory-Industry Statistics Workshop. She received her Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Sourav Santra, Sarepta Therapeutics

PhD Biostatistician with extensive experience in clinical development, Real-World Evidence, and work at major pharma, biotech, and CROs in the US and India. Currently at Sarepta Therapeutics.

Dr. Xiao Shan, Takeda

Dr. Haiying Wang, University of Connecticut

HaiYing Wang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Connecticut. Prior to his current position, he was an Assistant Professor of Statistics at the University of New Hampshire from 2013 to 2017. He received his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Missouri and his M.S. from the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2006. Dr. Wang’s research interests include informative subdata selection for big data, model selection and averaging, measurement error models, and semi-parametric regression. His work has been published in leading statistics and machine learning journals, such as Biometrika, IEEE Transactions, ASA, and JMLR, as well as at premier conferences including ICML and NeurIPS.

Dr. Roy Tamura, University of South Florida

Roy Tamura is emeritus associate professor of biostatistics in the Health Informatics Institute at the University of South Florida. At the University of South Florida, he consulted extensively with researchers in type 1 diabetes, and with rare disease consortiums in Prader-Willi syndrome and vasculitis. Prior to joining the University of South Florida, he was a Research Fellow at Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis. His research interests are in the design and analysis of small sample clinical trials. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Dr. Denise Yi, Servier

Denise Yi, PhD, is an Associate Director and Statistics Lead for Real-World Evidence (RWE) Analytics in Oncology at Servier, providing strategic leadership to generate evidence for clinical development, regulatory, and market access decisions. She leads high-impact RWE studies with strong methodological rigor aligned to evolving regulatory expectations. She also drives methodological innovation in external control analyses and indirect treatment comparisons to advance real-world data applications.

Dr. Haolin Li, Boston University

Haolin (Leo) Li is an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at the Boston University School of Public Health. He received his Ph.D. in Biostatistics, a Certificate in Innovation, Leadership, and Management, and a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research areas include clinical trials, survival analysis, machine learning, epidemiologic studies, and statistical leadership and pedagogy. He develops and applies advanced statistical methods to solve real-world problems and generate insights in healthcare research.

Dr. Purvi Prajapati, Lilly

Dr. Xinxin Dong, Amgen

Dr. Xinxin Dong is a Biostatistics Associate Director at Amgen, where she provides statistical leadership for several clinical development programs in rare disease. Before joining Amgen, she held biostatistics roles at Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly and Company, supporting studies across multiple therapeutic areas including immunology, neuroscience, cardiovascular outcomes, and oncology. She received her PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Pittsburgh. Her current research interests include multiple testing strategies, estimand frameworks and intercurrent event handling, historical borrowing and digital twins, and applications of AI in clinical trial design and drug development.

Dr. Qi Zhang, Sanofi

Dr. Qi Zhang is Global Head of Biostatistics for Rare Disease within Evidence Generation and Decision Science at Sanofi, leading a biostatistics team to support phase 2 to 3 clinical development and submission across variety of rare disease portfolios. Prior to joining Sanofi, she spent 11 years at Eli Lilly supporting neuroscience area. Qi received her Ph.D. in Biostatistics from university of Cincinnati. Her research encompasses a range of advanced topics, including global testing methods, causal inference with external control, Bayesian data borrowing, adaptive design including sample size re-estimation, etc.

Dr. Xingche Guo, University of Connecticut

Dr. Xingche Guo is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Connecticut. His research develops statistical and machine learning methods for complex structured data, including functional data analysis, latent variable models, reinforcement learning, and computational psychiatry for human brain and behavioral data.

Dr. Dihua Xu, Operations Subcommittee