At the end of every year, scientists from across Cytel’s business units are nominated for Cytel’s Spotlight Awards, which highlight significant contributions to biostatistics, innovative design, comparative effectiveness research, and real-world evidence. Every year, we are inspired to see our researchers living up to the ideals of scientific rigor and analytical excellence which enables us to live up to our ethos of making human impact. This year we chose to honor 8 younger scientists whose collective output spans contributions to complex designs, Bayesian methods, dose-finding models, and modeling the economic burden of disease.
There are many others whose contributions were also excellent, and I am saddened that we could not recognize every nominee. Still, I am excited by the enthusiasm they bring to our collective work. Our global community of nearly 300 scientists consistently publishes in Tier 1 journals; present their findings at research conferences across North America, Europe and Asia; and find meaningful ways to extend the discourse, even in pandemic years.
Congratulations to all and thank you for helping us push boundaries, together!
Christina Kwon
“Contributions to Systematic Literature Reviews and use of Real World Evidence to support disease understanding and economic burden:
- A Systematic Literature Review of the Epidemiology, Health-Related Quality of Life Impact, and Economic Burden of Immunoglobulin A Nephropathy
- PUK12 Target Population Estimates Using Real World Evidence (RWE) in Rare Diseases: A Case Study in Immunoglobulin a Nephropathy (IGAN)
- PUK20 Patient and Healthcare System Value Drivers in Immunoglobulin a Nephropathy (IgAN) in the United States
- PRO3 Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of Evidence on Clinical, Humanistic, and Economic Burden for Patients Who Have Undergone the Fontan Procedure”
Stacy Grieve
“Contributions to Systematic Literature Reviews to support disease understanding and economic burden:
- POSA424 Challenges of COVID-19 Research: Results from a Systematic Literature Review on COVID-19 and Asthma or COPD
- PRO3 Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of Evidence on Clinical, Humanistic, and Economic Burden for Patients Who Have Undergone the Fontan Procedure
- PCN25 Systematic Literature Review of Treatment Patterns, Long-Term Efficacy, and Safety of Dasatinib Therapy for Patients with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia”
Michael Groff
“Contributions to methodology for comparative effectiveness research:
- POSC426 Evaluating the Impact of Strong Covariate Imbalance on Population Adjusted Indirect Treatment Comparisons: A Simulation Study
- POSB310 The Impact of Small Sample Size on Selecting Appropriate Distributions for Parametric Survival Extrapolations Models: A Methodological Commentary and Simulation Study
- PCN177 Trends in Canadian Oncology Health Technology Assessment
- POSB309 Assessing the Validity of Median Time-to-Event Meta-Analysis Using Weighted Median and Median of Medians Approaches: A Simulation Study
- POSB311 Reviewing the Use of Matching Adjusted Indirect Comparisons in Health Technology Assessment Submissions”
“Contributions to Master Protocols design and COVID-19 clinical research:
- Effect of Early Treatment With Hydroxychloroquine or Lopinavir and Ritonavir on Risk of Hospitalization Among Patients With COVID-19 The TOGETHER Randomized Clinical Trial
- A multi-center, adaptive, randomized, platform trial to evaluate the effect of repurposed medicines in outpatients with early coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and high-risk for complications: the TOGETHER master trial protocol
- Reporting and design of randomized controlled trials for COVID-19: A systematic review
- POSC313 Network Meta-Interpolation; A Fast, Novel NMA Approach Accounting for Effect Modification”
Marco Ghiani
“Contributions to Health Outcomes Economic Research:
- P21 Social Distancing and Trends in Influenza Hospitalization during the COVID-19 Outbreak: A Difference-in-Difference Analysis of German Claims Data
- POSA32 Early COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany: Patient Characteristics and Clinical Outcomes
- POSB189 Mental Health in COVID Times: A Quasi-Experimental Analysis of the Impact of Lockdown Measures on Mental Healthcare Use in Germany
- Hospitalized with stroke at the weekend: Higher cost and risk of early death?
- Recreational Marijuana Legalization and Adolescent Use of Marijuana, Tobacco, and Alcohol
- Healthcare resource utilization and associated cost of patients with bone metastases from solid tumors who are naïve to bone-targeting agents: a comparative analysis of patients with and without skeletal-related events
- Long-term cost and complications of surgery in patients with ulcerative colitis: a claims data analysis”
Alind Gupta
“Contributions to methodology for comparative effectiveness research and the use of real world data:
- Assessment of Alectinib vs Ceritinib in ALK-Positive Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer in Phase 2 Trials and in Real-world Data
- Risk Prediction Using Bayesian Networks: An Immunotherapy Case Study in Patients With Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma
- Comparative Effectiveness of Atezolizumab, Nivolumab, and Docetaxel in Patients With Previously Treated Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer
- RW3 Quantitative Bias Analysis (QBA) for Comparative Effectiveness of Alectinib versus Ceritinib in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC)
- W3: Using Probabilistic Quantitative Bias Analysis to Account for Unmeasured Confounders When Estimating Treatment Effects in Real-World Data.”
Pranav Yajnik
“Contributions to Bayesian adaptive designs in clinical research:
- A Sequential Predictive Power Design for a COVID Vaccine Trial
- Bayesian Inference using Poisson-Gamma model under non-proportional hazards”
Shijie Yuan
“Contributions to innovative dose-finding clinical trials in oncology:
- The Ci3+3 design for dual-agent combination dose-finding clinical trials
- BaySize: Bayesian Sample Size Planning for Phase I Dose-Finding Trials
- Lessons Learned from the Bayesian Design and Analysis for the BNT162b2 COVID-19 Vaccine Phase 3 Trial
- Practical Impact of Modern Dose-Finding Designs When Compared With the 3 + 3 Design: An Editorial”
About Yannis Jemiai
Yannis Jemiai has a pivotal role within Cytel as Chief Scientific Officer he has oversight for the corporate-level Scientific Agenda which includes establishing research portfolios in Bayesian, small sample, and other flexible designs; as well as complex innovative designs including adaptive trials, master protocols and MAMS. Yannis also has an extensive portfolio of research in adaptive trial design, financial and pharmaceutical strategy, decision theory, and regulatory affairs.
His own research has been published in numerous statistical journals. Dr. Jemiai earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University, an M.P.H. from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Molecular and Cellular Biology also from Harvard.
