2021 AWARD WINNERS

Dr. Peter Austin is a Senior Scientist at ICES (formerly the Institute for Clinical Evaluate Sciences), where he has been since 1997. He is also a Full Professor in the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. Dr. Austin is biostatistician who has made many significant and substantial contributions to biostatistics over the course of his career. He has published over 650 articles in the peer-reviewed literature, including 155 as first-author. Of his first-authored peer-reviewed publications, 40 are in Statistics in Medicine and 12 are in Statistical Methods in Medical Research, two of the leading biostatistical journals. He has also published 14 first-authored papers in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. Dr. Austin has made important contributions to diverse areas of statistics: propensity score methods for estimating the effects of treatments using observational data (44 first-authored articles); methods for predicting patient outcomes (19 first-authored articles); statistical methods for hospital report cards (18 first-authored articles); methods for the analysis of multilevel data (11 first-authored articles); and methods for competing risks in survival analysis (7 first-authored articles).

Dr. Jennifer Payne is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University. She is also an Affiliated Scientist with both the Nova Scotia Health Authority and the IWK Health Centre.

Dr. Payne has been an active member of CSEB since its inception. In fact, she was the student representative at the time of CSEB incorporation, working with then President Dr. Nancy Kreiger on the CSEB by-laws. Dr. Payne is also the CSEB Representative to the International Network for Epidemiology in Policy (INEP). In this role, she has taken the initiative to mentor junior members of the CSEB Board to be active with INEP.

Dr. Ashleigh Tuite is an Assistant Professor in the Epidemiology Division at the DLSPH, University of Toronto. Prior to this appointment, she served for two years as Senior Epidemiologist and Modelling Lead at a private sector think-tank with a focus on emerging infectious diseases and situational awareness, consulted on infectious disease for Stanford University, and held a Post Doctoral fellowship in mathematical modelling at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In her work, she has advised provincial and national public health bodies in Canada, as well as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization. Dr. Tuite’s academic career focuses on using data to support decision-making under uncertainty. She has used this approach to examine critical research questions related to everything from cholera dynamics to sexually transmitted infections, vaccine-preventable diseases, Tuberculosis, emerging infectious diseases like Ebola, Chikungunya virus, Lassa fever, and now novel coronavirus (COVID-19). She is one of only a handful of academic researchers in North America who have specifically focused on “outbreak science” as a key component of their program of research. Her overarching aim has been to use statistical and mathematical modelling methods to understand the introduction and spread of infectious diseases (including pandemic viruses) in different populations, and she has applied her work to some of the most urgent public health problems locally and globally.

Dr. Jacquelyn Cragg is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia. She is also the Principal Investigator for the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (ICORD).

Dr. Cragg completed her PhD in 2015 in the field of epidemiology and applied biostatistics, with applications to spinal cord injury. She completed her PhD in under four years, before accepting a post-doctoral position at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health. Her combination of training in both epidemiology and statistics has carved a unique niche for her as a young investigator, and hence the recognition recently as a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair. Her CV (attached) boasts an incredibly long list of national and international awards, including the L’Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science International Rising Talents Award; for this award, she was selected among some 9,000 applicants across the globe, and was the only North American recipient that year. Her CV also boasts 50 publications in high impact peer-reviewed journals, including JAMA Neurology, Brain, Epidemiology, and Neurology.

Dr. Cragg is also contributing to the training and mentorship of highly qualified personnel including future researchers who will continue to move pharmacoepidemiology and data science research forward, as well as future health care providers who will make significant impacts to patient care.