Dr. Brian D. Williamson is an assistant biostatistics investigator at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, and an affiliate investigator in the Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, and Epidemiology Program, Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. He received his PhD in biostatistics from the University of Washington. Before joining Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, Dr. Williamson completed his postdoctoral research training at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. During his time at Fred Hutch, Dr. Williamson developed statistical methods to address issues arising in the development of biomarker panels for use in risk prediction, screening, and diagnosis. He is a biostatistician with expertise in statistical epidemiology, semiparametric and nonparametric estimation theory, and high-dimensional estimation and prediction. He is interested in developing robust procedures for statistical inference when machine learning is used to address problems in public health, and in working toward equity, diversity, and inclusion in biomedical research and practice. A central theme of his research is on identifying clinically useful biomarkers and assessing their performance.
Dr. Howard D. Strickler, MD, MPH, is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology & Population Health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, where he is the Muriel Block Chair in Epidemiology. He was also the co-leader of the Cancer Epidemiology Program of the Albert Einstein Cancer Center, as well as an associate director of the Clinical Core of the Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). He is internationally recognized for his work on HPV natural history in HIV+ women, which has played an important role in recent changes to the clinical guidelines for cervical cancer screening in women with HIV. Before Einstein in 1999, Dr. Strickler was a Senior Clinical Investigator for seven years at NCI in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, which he joined after completing his MPH and residency in preventive medicine at Johns Hopkins. At the national level, he has been a long-term member of the USPHS/CDC/NIH task force (HPV disease section), which sets clinical guidelines for disease prevention and treatment of adult HIV+ patients, and was a long-term member of the NCI EPIC study section. He has several times received honors from NCI/NIH for his research regarding HPV and cervical disease among HIV+ women, as well as his other molecular (obesity) epidemiologic research, which has been cited as a research highlight by the Epidemiology & Genomics Research Program of NCI.
Dr. Ross L. Prentice, a former senior vice president and director of Hutch’s Public Health Sciences Division, is a biostatistician who develops methods used in the design and analysis of clinical and population studies. He is particularly interested in research on the prevention of chronic diseases, emphasizing dietary and hormonal changes that may reduce the risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease. He and Hutch colleagues established the Clinical Coordinating Center for the Women’s Health Initiative, a national program launched in 1993 that enrolled more than 161,000 postmenopausal women to evaluate the effectiveness of dietary change and menopausal hormone therapy on reducing chronic disease risk. One landmark WHI study revealed that combined hormone replacement therapy increased the risk of breast cancer, heart disease, and stroke. The finding reduced the use of CHT and has helped prevent up to 20,000 cases of breast cancer per year in the U.S. alone. Dr. Prentice co-led the WHI team that 2016 received the Team Science Award from the American Association of Cancer Research. Dr. Prentice also develops statistical methods for analyzing objectively measured physical activity data to improve our understanding of the link between exercise and health outcomes, such as the prevention of cardiovascular disease.
Dr. Johanna W. Lampe is an experimental nutritionist and
cancer prevention researcher. Her research
focuses on the effects of diet and dietary constituents on cancer susceptibility
biomarkers in humans and the effects of human and gut microbial genetic variation
on responses to diet. Her application of controlled
feeding studies in humans, characterizing biochemical and physiologic responses
to dietary constituents and dietary patterns, has provided a useful platform
on which to better understand microbially derived variation in dietary
exposures and the impact on health. Dr. Lampe is a professor in the Public
Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and a research
professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington,
Seattle, WA. She obtained a PhD in nutritional sciences at the University of
Minnesota and received post-doctoral training in epidemiology at the University
of Minnesota before joining the faculty at Fred Hutch.
