JSM 2025 Section Awards: Biographies

Section Awards, by Jaya M. Satagopan, PhD, Rutgers School of Public Health.

During 2025, TSHS presented three awards to our Section members – the Young Investigator Award, the Outstanding Teaching Award, and the Distinguished Achievement Award.

YOUNG INVESTIGATOR AWARD: Dr. Sarah Samarodnitsky

Dr. Sarah Samarodnitsky, Assistant Biostatistician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, is the 2025 recipient of the Young Investigator Award. This award recognizes a young investigator for their promise as a statistics educator or in conducting statistics education research in the health sciences. Dr. Samarodnitsky excels in these areas. In her 2025 paper, “Leveraging a Community Partnership to Provide Statistical Consulting Experience to Graduate Student Trainees”, published in the Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education, Dr. Samarodnitsky and colleagues introduced a training model designed to develop consulting and collaboration skills among graduate students in statistics and biostatistics, helping ensure they are well prepared for their future careers. Their model, which emphasizes statistical practice, builds trainees’ skills by engaging them in supporting local high school students through research projects conducted using a simulation approach called the Islands. This structured approach provides trainees with authentic statistical consultation experience while allowing project complexity to be appropriately controlled. Dr. Samarodnitsky served as a panelist in the Section’s Spring 2024 webinar titled “Meeting students where they are: K-12 Biostatistics research”, where she discussed implementation of this model through partnerships with two high schools.

OUTSTANDING TEACHING AWARD: Dr. Jianghu (James) Dong

Dr. Jianghu (James) Dong, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, is the 2025 recipient of the Outstanding Teaching Award. This award recognizes an outstanding statistics educator and mentor in health sciences. Over the past six years, Dr. Dong has distinguished himself as a biostatistics educator, mentor, and researcher. He has consistently taken on some of the program’s most rigorous and technically demanding courses, including survival analysis and correlated data analysis, earning high praise for his clear and effective teaching and his inclusive and collaborative classroom environment. Dr. Dong is also a dedicated mentor who prepares students to work effectively with diverse stakeholders, including peers, faculty, supervisors, and research participants. Under his guidance, students have served as lead authors of collaborative publications, underscoring the strength and impact of this mentorship. Beyond the classroom, Dr. Dong supports student success and program excellence through leadership roles such as Chair of the MPH Admissions Committee and service on the MS Admissions and Student Recruitment Committee. He further demonstrates a strong commitment to instructional excellence through ongoing professional development, mentoring colleagues, and contributing to curriculum design.

DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: Dr. Ann Brearley

Dr. Ann Brearley, Associate Professor in the Division of Biostatistics and Health Data Science at University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health, is the 2025 recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award. This award recognizes a Section member who has provided outstanding long-term service to the Section. Dr. Brearley’s dedication to the Section is reflected in her extensive service and leadership, including roles as Publications Officer (2016-2019), Section Chair Elect (2020), Section Chair (2021), Section Past-Chair (2022). In these positions, Dr. Brearley demonstrated exemplary leadership, guiding the Section with vision and effectiveness. Notably, she surveyed Section members to better understand their needs and to ensure the Section’s activities were aligned with member priorities. Dr. Brearley also made pivotal contributions to the development and maintenance of the TSHS Resource Portal. Since the portal’s inception in 2012, she has been instrumental in its growth – first as a member of the development team and later as Editorial Board Chair (2016-2021). Through her tireless effort, the TSHS Resource Portal has become a vital resource for statistics educators, offering a wealth of materials to advance teaching and learning in the health sciences.