Dr. Yunusa Olufadi receives ASA Biopharmaceutical Section’s Student Scholarship Award

UofM doctoral graduate, Yunusa Olufadi, was recently awarded the ASA Biopharmaceutical Section’s Student Scholarship Award in recognition of his research contributions from his Ph.D. thesis. This competitive student award, given by the American Statistical Association (ASA), includes the opportunity to virtually present at the upcoming Joint Statistical Meeting in August. It also includes a $1,000 prize to the recipient.

The Joint Statistical Meeting is comprised of many well-regarded associations including the American Statistical Association, the Royal Statistical Society, the Canadian Statistical Society, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the International Biometric Society. Dr. Olufadi’s presentation is entitled “Spike-and-Slab LASSO for Estimation and Variable Selection in Longitudinal Mixed Endpoints Data with High-Dimensional Covariates.” It is a statistical procedure for jointly analyzing high dimensional mixed-endpoints (continuous, discrete, ordinal and nominal categorical) data. It is applicable to the analysis of data from biopharmaceutical studies.

Dr. Olufadi recently earned his Ph.D. degree in Applied Statistics from the Department of Mathematical Sciences. He has published more than ten articles and attended many conferences as a presenter and participant. Dr. Olufadi has diverse interests in methodological and theoretical research that are deeply rooted in real-world applications working independently and collaboratively with researchers from several disciplines. Some of his areas of research interest are modeling and analysis of high-dimensional data, multivariate mixed outcomes, longitudinal data analysis and standardized instrument developments. Dr. Olufadi is a member of many professional organizations such as The American Statistical Association, International Biometrics Society, and The American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Olufadi has also received other awards, most prominent among which is the Deming Student Scholarship Award. The award title is “Deming Scholar.” Only four of the Ph.D. students who applied were selected for the Deming Award. He made a poster presentation titled “Methods for Analyzing Clustered Multiple Mixed Outcomes with High-Dimensional Covariates” at the 75th Annual Deming Conference on Applied Statistics, December 2019, in Atlantic City, NJ.

“Yunusa has the potential to become a very distinguished scholar. I have been very impressed by his resourcefulness and fearlessness to explore and try new approaches. Most importantly, he never gives up easily,” said Dr. E. Olusegun George, Olufadi’s thesis advisor.