Lisa LaVange, PhD, is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and was the 2018 ASA President. She is also Distinguished Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Biostatistics in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her role as associate chair, she coordinates development of the data science curriculum for the Gillings School. She is also director of the department’s Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center (CSCC), overseeing faculty, staff, and students involved in large-scale clinical trials and epidemiological studies coordinated by the center. Currently, she is Coordinating Center Principal Investigator (PI) for the NICHD-sponsored Adolescent Medicine Trials in HIV/AIDS Interventions Network and of the NHLBI-sponsored Precision Medicine Interventions in Severe and/or Exacerbation Prone Asthma Network (PrecISE).

On April 11-12, 2019, Prof. LaVange visited Baylor, giving two talks. One talk was a university-wide talk titled “Opportunities and Challenges in Clinical Research with the Use of Big Data and Novel Trial Designs.” A second talk, primarily for the Department of Statistical Science, was “Reflections on Statistical Practice, Leadership, and Training.” Prof. LaVange mentored senior female faculty and statisticians during her visit and received a basketball signed by Baylor women’s basketball head coach and recent national championship winner Kim Mulkey.