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 ToxSIG Webinar: Good statistical practices to tackle the lack of reproducibility in preclinical research

In this webinar we will explain the how to understand the sequences of issues and how to fix it in order to drastically improve the replicability of the results. Through example the presentation will cover concepts such as OFAT vs DoE, p-values and Bayesian statistics and Power vs Assurance as easy opportunities to improve robustness of decisions.

PSI Webinar: Using visualisation to help make decisions

This webinar will feature presentations from 3 speakers on the topic of Using Visualisations to Help Make Decisions.

Introduction To Industry Training Course 2020

The ITIT course will take 25 delegates new to the industry on a complete drug development experience from discovery to marketing. They will visit 6 companies from October 2020 to July 2021 to learn about 6 topics from experts in their field. The ITIT course will have 3 sessions in continental Europe and 3 - 4 sessions in the UK. It promises to be a truly memorable course.

PSI Webinar: Patient preference studies

In this webinar you will hear an introduction to what a patient preference study is as well as an overview of where this type of study can inform regulatory decision making. This will be followed by 2 examples looking at potential approaches to eliciting patient preference.

A PSI Training Course - R for SAS Users

This course is aimed at Statisticians and Programmers experienced in SAS, but little or no experience with R. An Introduction to R studio and the R language, statistical graphics, programming statistical models, simulations and more…

PSI Toxicology SIG Workshop

PSI Toxicology SIG workshop – 24th and 25th November 2020 The Toxicology SIG provides a forum for statisticians working in regulatory/investigative toxicology, as well as most other pre-clinical areas, to discuss issues and interact with one another. This 1.5-day workshop will involve approximately 20 statisticians, focusing on discussions around “best practice” in the statistical analysis of various data types. The afternoon of Day 1 will include a 4.5 hour Bayesian training course focused towards applications in toxicology/pre-clinical, provided by Prof. Dr. Katja Ickstadt and is included in the workshop fee. The cost will be £270 including VAT per delegate, inclusive of food and one night’s accommodation (and the training course). The workshop is being held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Heathrow. The agenda and topics that will be discussed are yet to be finalised, but please get in touch with gareth.thomas@covance.com if you have suggestions. Full details will be circulated in the coming weeks.

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