Ji-Hyun Lee, DrPH, a professor in the Department of Biostatistics and 2025 president of the American Statistical Association. Photo by Lindsay Gamble.
By Erin Jester
Ji-Hyun Lee, DrPH, is a statistician for the people.
“I truly value every data point in my hand, because each one represents a patient’s story, struggle and journey,” Lee said. “It’s the key to understanding and improving lives.”
Lee, a professor in the College of Public Health and Health Professions’ Department of Biostatistics and associate director for Cancer Quantitative Sciences at the UF Health Cancer Institute, became the 120th president of the American Statistical Association on Jan. 1.
She is the first Korean American statistician, the first woman statistician from Florida, and the first cancer center applied biostatistician in the history of the ASA presidency.
The ASA, founded in 1839 in Boston, is the largest professional group for statisticians and data scientists in the world, with more than 15,000 members in about 90 countries.
Lee has three goals for her presidency: enhance the visibility of the profession, create more opportunities for ASA members, and broaden and diversify membership. To achieve them, she is focused on building strong, lasting bridges within ASA and across the professional community.
Statisticians, she admitted, are not always good at communicating with those outside their field. To increase interest in statistics and bring awareness to their work, Lee said it’s essential to bring in other communities. She envisions creating local meetings to engage people in all professions with how statistics could solve local problems and enrich lives.
“There’s a misconception that data science and statistics aren’t for everyone,” Lee said. “But with data-intensive jobs growing across every sector, building a strong foundation in these fields is critical for America’s workforce and global competitiveness.”
Lee wants blossoming statisticians to look beyond the world of academia to explore how they can apply their skills to make the broadest impact, she said.
Lee also wants to challenge the notion that only extraordinary individuals can affect meaningful change by highlighting the profound impact of everyday individuals.
“It’s about helping others,” she said.
Curiosity, too, is critical to driving innovation. Biostatisticians are continually working to develop new methods that help answer new questions and advance health science.
In a phenomenon called pseudo-progression, tumors in dogs and cats treated with personalized cancer vaccines may appear to grow due to immune response. Using topographical data analysis, researchers are able to determine whether the treatment is successful despite the appearance of disease progression.
An example: In a study Lee is involved with, UF researchers are creating personalized cancer vaccines with patients’ own tumor cells to train their immune system to reach the right targets. One of the primary challenges of preclinical trials in dogs and cats is pseudo-progression, where the tumor appears to grow, although it may be an immune reaction.
To determine whether the treatment is a success or a failure, the research team uses topological data analysis, a method that examines the shape and structure of the tumor, not just its size. The method helps quantify complex tumor patterns from MRI data, even with small sample sizes and variable tumor features.
Lee, along with Arkaprava Roy, Ph.D., an assistant professor of biostatistics, and Elias Sayour, M.D., Ph.D., and Rachel Moor, M.D., of the College of Medicine’s neurosurgery department, submitted a grant proposal to develop new statistical methods using topological data analysis to further examine tumor pseudo-progression with targeted cancer vaccines.
“This kind of biostatistics and data science work lets us figure out what’s truly happening much sooner and with more confidence,” Lee said. “Ultimately, we hope this work will help us identify when an apparent setback is actually a step forward, bringing personalized cancer vaccines closer to patients.”
As one might expect, Lee’s list of achievements is long. With more than 20 years’ experience in cancer research, she is the author of more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and has held leadership roles in multiple professional organizations. Lee served on the ASA’s Council of Chapters governing board as a district vice chair, and on ASA’s Board of Directors for three years. In 2017, she served as president of the Caucus for Women in Statistics, an international organization that supports and advances women statisticians’ careers. She was also a member of the Korean International Statistical Society’s Board of Directors from 2017 to 2022.
After earning a master’s degree and a doctorate in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she spent 11 years at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, beginning as an assistant professor and eventually becoming a tenured full professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics. During that time, she also held professorships in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of South Florida College of Public Health at the University of South Florida College of Medicine.
For the next four years, Lee was the head of the Biostatistics Group at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer. Although she fell in love with New Mexico’s epic landscape and its famous green Hatch chiles, she began to miss the East Coast. After interviewing with UF Health Cancer Institute director Jonathan Licht, M.D., Lee said she intuitively knew UF was the right place for her under his leadership and strong vision for the center’s future. She joined the biostatistics faculty in 2018.
But even with such a lengthy resume, Lee was shocked and nearly too intimidated to accept her nomination for the ASA presidency in 2022.
In addition to the increased workload that comes with such a position, she said her Korean heritage was another factor to consider. One colleague told her not to disclose her immigration story in her candidate statement. Another told her the ASA wasn’t ready to elect an Asian woman. But she harnessed her bravery.
“This is the honor of my life,” she said. “I’m very grateful that my fellow statisticians trust me in my role as president.”
Describing what she called her transformational, rather than transactional, vision for her presidency, Lee said she sees a moral responsibility to foster inclusion and collaboration, which she hopes will make statisticians of all backgrounds and specialties feel welcome in the ASA.
Outside of her biostatistics work, Lee is a self-taught musician and an avid collector of musical instruments. She started with a small, inexpensive keyboard as a broke student. Later, when she landed her first professional job, she bought an alto sax and joined a small band that played for the local community, including nursing homes.
Now, she marks each milestone in her career with a new instrument. The cello, which she plays in a local chamber music group, was the reward for becoming an associate professor. With her promotion to full professor, it was a grand piano. She joked that running out of room in her house forced her to look for smaller instruments. The latest acquisitions were a ukelele and a kalimba.
Every time Lee learns a new instrument, she joins a band. Bands and scientific communities have commonality, she said: You must possess the skills for the task, listen to others, take ownership of the work, find joy and focus on what you bring to the group, rather than trying to be the star.