In honor of her achievements and career-long commitment to promoting diversity in academia, Francesca Dominici was recently selected to receive the Janet L. Norwood Award, which recognizes woman statisticians for outstanding achievement in the statistical sciences.
Committed to data–driven research that pushes the frontiers of science, the award is an acknowledgment of Dr. Dominici’s efforts in taking on important questions in environmental health science, climate change, comparative effectiveness research in cancer, and health policy.
Dr. Dominici’s research involves the development of new methods in Bayesian causal inference to overcome the challenges inherent in the analysis of large and complex observational studies. One of Dominici’s recent projects on air quality links 20 years of claims data on cause-specific hospitalization for 65-year-olds in the Medicare system to daily air pollution levels from thousands of geographical locations. Rigorous statistical analysis of the data in this case not only provided robust evidence on the adverse effects of air pollution and climate change on health, but has led to more stringent ambient air quality standards in the United States.
The Norwood Award will be presented to Dr. Dominici by the School of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and she will deliver a special lecture on Wednesday, September 14, at UAB’s Edge of Chaos.