Statistical Advisory Panel

Nature Medicine has partnered with the American Statistical Association (ASA) to facilitate the timely, consistent, and thorough statistical peer review of clinical trials. The statistical advisory board is chaired by leading statisticians with ample experience in design, conduct and reporting of clinical research studies. They assist our in-house editorial team with the identification of appropriate topic-specific statistical peer reviewers, with a focus on diversity and inclusion, as well as with promoting reporting transparency, open data sharing and provision of constructive statistical feedback to authors. All editorial decisions are made by the journal's in-house editors.

Chief Statistical Advisors

Ji-Hyun Lee, MS DrPH
Department of Biostatistics, University of Florida

Dr. Ji-Hyun Lee is a Professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Florida and Associate Director for the Cancer Quantitative Sciences at the University of Florida Health Cancer Center (UFHCC). Her role at the UFHCC involves providing strategic leadership and direction, fostering rigorous and integrated research among Cancer Center scientists. Dr. Lee earned her master’s and doctorate in Biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the design and conduct of clinical trials, cluster/group randomized trials, methods for repeated measurements, and best statistical practices. As a lead statistician, she has played key roles in Biostatistical Cores for large programmatic grants, including Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE), National Cancer Institute (NCI) center core grants (P30), and program project grants (P50). She also serves on the scientific review and monitoring committee for UFHCC’s therapeutic clinical trials.

Dr. Lee is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and a certified professional statistician (PStat®) through the ASA. In 2023, Dr. Lee was elected as the 120th President of the ASA. She will serve as the ASA President-Elect in 2024 and as President in 2025

Natalie Dean, PhD
Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University

Dr. Dean is an Assistant Professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. She earned her PhD in Biostatistics from Harvard University and completed her postdoctoral work at the University of Florida. She was also a statistical consultant for the World Health Organization’s HIV Department. Before arriving at Emory, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida. Her areas of expertise are in infectious disease epidemiology and vaccine study design. Her research focuses on clinical trial and observational studies for evaluating vaccine efficacy, with a focus on emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola, Zika, and COVID-19.

Dr. Dean is the Principal Investigator of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant R01-AI139761 on vaccine study design for emerging infectious disease threats. She is a Co-Investigator on a cluster-randomized trial of Targeted Indoor Residual Spraying for the prevention of Aedes-borne disease in Mexico. She has been funded on other research activities supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. She received a 2020 Excellence Award for Assistant Professors from the Provost of the University of Florida and was selected to the 2022 COPSS Leadership Academy. Dr. Dean has been internationally recognized for her public engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Michele Guindani, PhD
Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health, UCLA

Dr. Guindani is a full professor in the Department of Biostatistics at UCLA. He received his Ph.D. degree in Statistics from Università Bocconi (Milan, Italy) in 2005 under the supervision of Sonia Petrone (Department of Decision Sciences, Universita’ Bocconi, Italy) and Alan E. Gelfand (Department of Statistical Sciences, Duke University). From 2005 to 2007, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, working with Peter Mueller and Gary L. Rosner. He obtained his first faculty position as an Assistant Professor in Statistics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of New Mexico (2007–2010). He then held a position as Assistant Professor (with the award of tenure) in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (2010-2016). From 2016 to June 2022, he was a Professor in the Department of Statistics of the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine (UCI).

He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA), and also a member of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), the International Statistical Institute (ISI), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Western North American Region (WNAR) of the International Biometrics Society.

Judy Zhong, PhD
Professor and Chief, Division of Biostatistics, Department of Population Health Sciences, Weill Cornell Medicine

Dr. Judy Zhong is a leading biostatistician specializing in statistical methodology, clinical trial design, and real-world data analysis. She is Professor and Chief of the Division of Biostatistics at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM), where she also directs the WCM Data Coordinating Center. Her work spans NIH-funded research, interdisciplinary collaborations, and innovative statistical strategies for both early- and late-phase clinical trials and observational studies. Dr. Zhong’s research focuses on precision risk prediction, bias correction in EHR-based studies, and fairness evaluation in AI/ML models. She is particularly interested in developing efficient, equitable, and biologically informed approaches to clinical decision-making. She has led the development and validation of predictive models using multimodal data and currently leads a framework to address bias stemming from missing or mislabeled sensitive attributes in clinical algorithms. Her lab has been continuously supported by NIH R01 grants for statistical methods development and applied biomedical research. She earned her Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of Washington. Prior to joining WCM, Dr. Zhong was a Professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where she directed the Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design Core and co-directed the Biostatistics and Study Resources at the NYU Cancer Institute.

Statistical Advisors
Infectious Diseases
Lee Kennedy-Shaffer, Yale University
Yang Yang, University of Georgia 
Yunda Huang, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Tim Tsang, Hong Kong University
Bryan Blette, Vanderbilt University
Svetlana Eden, Vanderbilt University

Metabolic Diseases
Peng Wei, MD Anderson Cancer Center 
Qiwei Li, The University of Texas at Dallas
Rhonda Bacher, University of Florida 
Liming Liang, Harvard University 
Ying Wei, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health
Kyu Ha Lee, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Oncology
Cara Joyce, Loyola University Chicago
Xueliang Pan, Ohio State University
Qingzhao Yu, Louisiana State University Health-New Orleans
MinJae Lee, University of Texas Southwestern
Yingqi Zhao, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Hui Zhang, Northwestern University
Naim Rashid, University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center
Michael Schell, Moffitt Cancer Center
Menggang Yu, University of Michigan
Yimei Li, University of Pennsylvania
Chen Hu, Johns Hopkins University
Maiying Kong, University of Louisville
Lili Tian, State University of New York at Buffalo
Li Tang, Cleveland Clinic Foundation and Case Western Reserve University
Matthew Schipper, University of Michigan
Mithat Gonen, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Nolan Wages, Virginia Commonwealth University
Ruitao Lin,The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Zhigang Li, University of Florida
Hong Wang, University of Pittsburgh

Neurology & Psychiatry
Bo Zhang, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Cai Li, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Chengjie Xiong, Washington University School of Medicine
Chung-Chou Chang, University of Pittsburgh
Daniel Felsky, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and University of Toronto
Hongyuan Cao, Florida State University
Ivo Dinov, University of Michigan
Min Zhang, University of California, Irvine
Mulugeta Gebregziabher, Medical University of South Carolina and Charleston VA Medical Center
Nathaniel O'Connell, Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Sejong Bae, Augusta University
Xiaofeng Wang, Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute
Yorghos Tripodis, Boston University School of Public Health
Yuanjia Wang, Columbia University
Zhaohui Qin, Emory University