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Zhang Receives Connecticut Chapter of the American Statistical Association’s Honor a Statistician Award

On July 11, Heping Zhang, Ph.D., Professor of Biostatistics at the Yale School of Public Health, was presented with the Connecticut Chapter of the American Statistical Association’s (ASA) Honor a Statistician Award. The Award is given to a person who has made a significant contribution to the Chapter and to the statistics profession.

Zhang was made a Fellow of the ASA in 2000. He is a leader in developing and implementing flexible and powerful approaches to the analyses of complex data including longitudinal data with multi- dimensional responses, neuroimaging data, genetic and genomic data. Zhang has made major research efforts in child health ranging from the identification of neurological and genetic pathways in developing brain to the assessment of risk factors for pregnancy outcomes and to the understanding of cognitive and behavioral development in children. He serves as Principal Investigator of the National Genomic and Proteomic Network for Preterm Birth Research, a network used to investigate genetic and environmental factors for preterm birth using genomic, proteomic and metabolomic approaches. Zhang has also made strides in the research of substance use, especially in understanding the transition from use to abuse.

At the Chapter’s banquet, Zhang gave a talk on “Genetic Analysis of Ordinal Traits,” discussing a proportional odds model for ordinal data and related association tests, with a fascinating application to gene detection.

The ASA is a scientific and educational society established to promote excellence in the application of statistics.

—Story by Marcie Foley