Details

Congratulations to Ying Ding, associate professor in the Department of Biostatistics, for winning the 2021 Craig Award!

See Dr. Ding receive the award during our 2021 Convocation celebration...

Nominators said about Ding: 

• As a teacher, Dr. Ding can answer very hard theory questions as well as practical problems that students may have about statistics, and she is also experienced in inspiring a student's interest in statistics.
• Dr. Ding is very good at helping organize a student’s PhD life and provide useful guidance, and she believes a hardworking and productive PhD life is always beneficial to a student’s future career no matter what field he/she wants to work in as future career.
• Dr. Ding is accessible in and out of class. She also welcomes discussion with students and encourage students to learn outside of class.
• Dr. Ding always encourages me to participate in all kinds of conference/symposium. Each time that I need to give a presentation, she is willing to help me go over the slides and brings up really good points to improve the contents and give me suggestions on my presentation skills. 

Ying Ding received her BS in Mathematics from Nanjing University, China and her PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Michigan. She then joined Eli Lilly and Company as a Research Scientist and then a Senior Research Scientist, doing clinical trials and personalized medicine research in type 2 diabetes. Motivated by her passion in teaching and research, she pursed an academic career by joining Pitt Public Health in 2013. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Biostatistics and an affiliate faculty member in the Hillman Cancer Center.

Dr. Ding teaches two core courses in BIOSTAT: Mixed Models and Applied Survival Analysis: Methods and Practice. She also teaches an elective course cross listed by BIOSTAT and STAT: Survival Analysis. Teaching is her lifelong passion, and she was nominated for the Craig Teaching award in 2013 and 2020.

In addition to classroom teaching, Dr. Ding is very active in student advising and mentoring. She has successfully graduated four PhD students as their dissertation advisor or co-advisor. She is currently advising five PhD students. She has served on PhD dissertation or MS thesis committees for more than 20 students. Her students won multiple national awards such as the International Biometrics Society’s ENAR distinguished student paper award, International Chinese Statistical Association student paper award, etc. She also served on school EPCC for two terms and currently chairs the PhD admissions committee in Biostatistics. Dr. Ding’s primary research focuses on survival data analysis with a wide range of applications including disease risk prediction and precision medicine. She also develops novel analytic methods for large-scale genetics and multi-omics data to study psychiatric disorders and aging-related diseases.

See the presentation of the award at our virtual Convocation ceremony:

(Craig award presentation at 40:15)