A Visit with Alumnus Aaron Foster, ScD ’00
VP Business Analytics & Insights, Vaccines, Rare Disease & Oncology at Pfizer, Inc.,
Lecturer in Applied Analytics at Columbia School of Professional Studies
Business analytics is the science of driving better business decisions and having a competitive advantage to how you use statistics and data to make them. Aaron Foster is a Vice President of Business Analytics & Insights at Pfizer, Inc., and his global organization supports four of Pfizer’s core innovative businesses: Vaccines, Oncology, Rare Disease and Emerging Markets.
Aaron’s focus is using real-world data, survey and statistical techniques to understand unmet medical need and help Pfizer develop medicines to address these needs. He also guides marketing and sales strategies for approved medicines to help patients, physicians and other stakeholders understand their role in treatment and prevention. In addition to working at Pfizer, Aaron is a lecturer in Applied Analytics at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies. Earlier in his career, Aaron was a statistician at KPMG LLP and a Biostatistician at Bristol-Myers Squibb. He holds a Doctor of Science in Biostatistics from Harvard University (where he won the Robert Reed prize) and a BS in Mathematics from Morehouse College.
Monday, April 2 | 1:00-2:30pm | FXB G12
Lunch provided
RSVP here
Data Science for Social Good: Career Panel
Data science has far-reaching applications beyond the tech world. Ever wonder what a data science career in social sciences or public service looks like? Come hear from data scientists at the Red Cross, McGraw-Hill Education, City of Boston – Analytics team, Civis Analytics, and National Fire Protection Association. Wow! Sounds fantastic.
Date: THIS Wednesday evening, March 28, 2018
Time: 6:00 – 7:30 pm
Location: Harvard’s Tsai Auditorium, CGIS South S010 (1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge)
Refreshments provided
RSVP here
Find panelist bios HERE:
Mohammed Ayub, Data Scientist at the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA)
Stefanie Costa Leabo, Analytics Team – City of Boston
Austin Crumpton, Data Scientist at Red Cross
Sarah Graham, Civis Analytics
Shirin Mojarad, Lead Data Scientist at McGraw-Hill Education
Sponsored by the Harvard Big Data Club. Consider joining the HBDC executive board—they are looking for co-presidents and VPs. Visit the HBDC website to apply, and talk with our own biostatistics students Divy Kangeyan (Co-president) or Xinrui Cao (VP External Relations) for more details!
Lunchtime Career Chat with Catherine Calder
Please join our next invited colloquia speaker, Dr. Catherine Calder, Professor of Statistics, Ohio State University, for a Lunchtime Career to hear about her own career path, as well as insights and advice she has for students and postdocs like you!
Catherine (Kate) Calder received her PhD from Duke and joined the statistics faculty at Ohio State in 2003. She serves as an associate director of the Mathematical Biosciences Institute and is a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Population Research and the Criminal Justice Research Institute at Ohio State. She is currently an associate editor for the Annals of Applied Statistics and Bayesian Analysis and has served the profession through various elected roles in sections of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and in the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. Her research has been funded by the NIH, NSF, NASA, and other agencies and foundations. She received the ASA Section on Statistics and the Environment’s 2013 Young Investigator Award and was elected Fellow of the ASA in 2014. Much of Kate’s research is motivated by applications in the environmental, social, and health sciences, and she currently collaborates with social scientists at Ohio State on the Adolescent Health and Development in Context Study, a longitudinal study of adolescents and their daily activity patterns. Cate has mentored and taught many students.
Thursday, March 29 | 1:00-2:00pm | Rm 401, Dept of Biostatistics
Lunch provided! RSVP to Valerie Coffee
Don’t miss the colloquia talk thereafter at 3:45 pm (FXB G13) where Kate will discuss “Activity Patterns and Ecological Networks: Identifying Shared Exposures to Social Contexts”. This is a really cool area of work!
Lunchtime Career Chats are specifically designed to be informal, career-based discussions that students and postdocs can have with our invited speakers whom they might not otherwise have access to by attending just the colloquia talks, which are focused on research.
