Statistical Excellence in the Pharmaceutical Industry Award

We are now accepting entries for the 2020 Award

Our award for statistical excellence in the pharmaceutical industry is made jointly with the RSS (Royal Statistical Society) every year. The award is for the most influential example of the application of an existing statistical practice, or the implementation of an innovative statistical practice, in this industry.

Criteria

We are looking for entries that have demonstrated one or more of the following:

  • A clear understanding of the needs of researchers and investigators
  • An application of an existing statistical practice to a new area that has increased the quality and efficiency of investigations
  • A new development in the design of investigations and/or the analysis of data that has led to further insights into the safety, efficacy and value of medicines or devices
  • An excellent way to communicate results that is clear and helpful to a wide array of users, showing how statisticians understand the range of user needs

Nominees can be based anywhere in the world and do not need to be a member of PSI or the RSS. Updates on where and when the Award will be presented will be posted in due course.

Download the entry form here.

The deadline for entries is midnight on Friday 22nd May 2020.

Previous Winners

The 2019 award was jointly presented to Mike Smith (Pfizer) for his work on ‘Excellence in research around population modelling in drug development’ and its ‘pioneering practical Bayesian methods with drug development in the context of optimising decision making within trials and modelling dose response with pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modelling’ and Graeme Archer and Jacquie Christie (GSK) for their work on ‘Quantitative Decision-Making for clinical development’, which was deemed to be ‘at the cutting edge of revolutionising data driven decision making within the industry’. 

The 2018 award was jointly presented to Dr. Mouna Akacha (Novartis) for “Enhancing drug development using clinically interpretable treatment effect measures (‘estimands‘) that allow for efficient statistical analyses” and Dr. Simon Bate for “Improving the quality and reliability of animal research through the use of InVivoStat: a statistical software package for animal researchers”. 

The 2017 award was presented to Michael O'Kelly for his work 'Promoting analytical solutions and best practices for handling missing data in pharmaceutical industry'.  The judges felt that in this respect, he has made a major contribution to enhancing the practical application of modelling and simulation methodology and tools for analysing data with missing values. 
Richard Nixon of Novartis was presented with the award in 2016 for “Enhancing decision-making in drug development using quantitative approaches’. 

Katrina Gore and Nicky Best (joint winners, 2015, Pfizer and GSK respectively). Katrina Gore for her work on the Assay Capability Tool (ACT), designed to guide the development of drug discovery assays. Nicky Best for her work implementing a process that has turned beliefs about the chances of success into formal prior distributions.

Award cropped

Upcoming Events

PSI Webinar: Risk Based Monitoring & QTL's

Since the introductio of ICH-E6 R2 Addendum sponsors must introduce formal Quality Risk Management and define Quality Tolerance Limits to their clnical development programs. This webinar will cover an introduction to those concepts, recent developments and examples of how companies are defining QTL's in practice.

PSI Webinar: Innovative approaches in the development of pediatric medicines

Do you want to learn more about innovative approaches for the development of pediatric medicines? Then join this PSI webinar on December 8. We have organized an exciting webinar with very knowledgeable speakers who will share their thoughts, ideas and experiences, including case studies, on a range of issues relating to historical data, Bayesian methodology, and partial and full extrapolation approaches in the context of developing pediatric medicines.

PSI Vaccine SIG Webinar: Some considerations on developing COVID-19 Vaccines

Statistical Observations on SARS-CoV-2 & Crisis Vaccine Clinical Testing. Scott Patterson, Bo Fu, Ya Meng, Fabrice Bailleux, Josh Chen.

PSI EIWG Webinar: PIONEERing estimands in Clinical Research

Bringing estimands to life through a real case study. Members of the estimands Implementation Working Group (EIWG) will describe the background and study objectives, intercurrent events of interest and chosen estimands in the PIONEER study.

PSI Medical Statistics Careers Event

Our annual PSI Medical Statistics Careers Event, will be held online using the Career Fair Plus app on Wednesday 3rd March 2021. The event will include a live online panel discussion and a virtual exhibition session.

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