SCI Board

PAST PRESIDENT

Dylan Small

Professor of Statistics, Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania

BIO
Dylan Small, PhD is the Universal Furniture Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Small received his PhD in Statistics from Stanford University and his AB in Mathematics from Harvard University. Dr. Small’s research interests include causal inference and its applications to health and public policy. He was the founding Editor of the journal Observational Studies and continues to serve on its editorial board.

PRESIDENT

Fabrizia Mealli

Professor of Statistics Econometrics, European University Institute

BIO
Fabrizia Mealli
Fabrizia Mealli is on leave as Professor of Statistics from the University of Florence. Since 2023, she is Professor of Statistics and Econometrics at the EUI’s Department of Economics.
She held visiting positions at the Harvard Statistics and Biostatistics Departments in 2001, 2015, and 2017.
Her research focuses on statistical methods for causal inference in experimental and observational settings, estimation techniques, simulation methods, missing data, and Bayesian inference, with applications to the social and biomedical sciences.

She is an Elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association; she is currently an Associate Editor for Biometrika, the Journal of the American Statistical Association T&M, The Annals of Applied Statistics, and Observational Studies. Since 2001, Mealli has been teaching Causal Inference in International Schools and in Master and PhD programmes around the world.

TREASURER

Razieh Nabi

Assistant Professor of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Rollins School of Public Health

SECRETARY

Youjin Lee

Assistant Professor of Bio Statistics, Brown University

MEMBER AT LARGE

Samrachana Adhikari

Associate Professor, Department of Population Health, NYU Langone

MEMBER AT LARGE

Carrie Cihak

Evidence & Impact Officer, King County Government, Washington State

BIO
Carrie Cihak leads evidence-informed practice and partnerships for the regional government of the 12^th largest county in the United States. Cihak guides County agencies on community outcomes and impact, with a strong focus on advancing racial equity. Former roles at the County include three years leading learning and evidence practice and partnerships at King County Metro Transit; serving as an inaugural member of the community mitigation team in the County’s pandemic response; and eight years as Chief of Policy for the King County Executive with responsibility for identifying the highest priority policy areas and community outcomes for leadership focus and developing and launching innovative solutions to complex, controversial, and cross-sector issues. Cihak has served as sponsor for the County’s nationally-recognized work on equity and social justice and is architect of several County initiatives such as Best Starts for Kids. Cihak also served for eight years as a senior-level policy and budget analyst for the King County Council and as lead staff for the King County Board of Health.
Cihak is trained as a Ph.D.-level (ABD) economist specializing in Japan and served as staff economist on international trade and finance for President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. Cihak is a Local Government Fellow and serves on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Standards of Excellence at Results for America, a non-profit organization that supports all levels of government in making the use of data and evidence in decision making the “new normal”. Cihak was the first government Policy Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (CASBS) in 2017-18 and has been a Research Affiliate at CASBS since that time. With Jake Bowers (University of Illinois – Statistics & Political Science), Cihak co-founded and co-directs the Causal Inference for Social Impact Lab at CASBS that brings policymakers and academic researchers together to innovate on causal inference methodology and practice.

SCI Steering Committee

Stephen Cole

Professor
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Department of Epidemiology

BIO
Stephen R. Cole works to build accurate and impactful knowledge, particularly population-health (epidemiologic) knowledge.
Professor Cole is interested in study designs and analyses that accurately estimate parameters of central interest to population-health scientists, such as risk. These study designs include randomized experiments, pseudoexperiments (i.e., observational studies) and thought-experiments (e.g., simulation studies). Substantively, Dr. Cole is interested in infectious diseases, primarily HIV, and cancer.

Jennifer Hill

Professor of Applied Statistics Director, PRIISM Center Co-Director, A3SR MS Program New York University

BIO
Jennifer Hill develops and evaluates methods that help answer causal questions vital to policy research and scientific development. Her ast work focused on situations in which it is difficult or impossible to perform traditional randomized experiments, or when even seemingly pristine study designs are complicated by grouped structures or missing data. Most recent work focuses on Bayesian nonparametric methods that allow for flexible estimation of causal models and are less time-consuming and more precise than competing methods (e.g. propensity score approaches). These approaches intersect with other causal inference topics such as common support violations, sensitivity analysis, and estimation of heterogeneous effects. Hill has published in a variety of leading journals including Journal of the American Statistical Association, Statistical Science, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Public Health, and Developmental Psychology. She earned her PhD in Statistics at Harvard University in 2000 and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Child and Family Policy at Columbia University’s School of Social Work in 2002. Hill is current the Director of the Center for Practice and Research at the Intersection of Information, Society, and Methodology (PRIISM) and Co-Director of and the Master’s of Science Program in Applied Statistics for Social Science Research (A3SR).

Luke Keele

Associate Professor
University of Pennsylvania
Surgery and Biostatistics

BIO
Luke Keele (Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2003) is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania with joint appointments in Surgery and Biostatistics. Professor Keele specializes in research on applied statistics with a focus on causal inference, design-based methods, matching, natural experiments and instrumental variables. He also conducts research on topics in educational program evaluation, election administration, and health services research. He has published articles in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Annals of Applied Statistics, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, The American Statistician, American Political Science Review, Political Analysis, and Psychological Methods.

Ilya Shpitser

Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Johns Hopkins University

Dylan Small

Professor of Statistics, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

BIO
Dylan Small, PhD is the Class of 1965 Wharton Professor in the Department of Statistics at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Small received his PhD in Statistics from Stanford University and his AB in Mathematics from Harvard University. Dr. Small’s research interests include causal inference and applications of statistics to health and public policy. He was the founding Editor of the journal Observational Studies and continues to serve on the editorial board of Observational Studies as well as the Journal of Casual Inference and several other statistical journals.

Leadership

SCI Board

PAST PRESIDENT

Dylan Small

PRESIDENT

Fabrizia Mealli

TREASURER

Razieh Nabi

SECRETARY

Youjin Lee

MEMBER AT LARGE

Samrachana Adhikari

MEMBER AT LARGE

Carrie Cihak

SCI Steering Committee

Stephen Cole

Jennifer Hill

Luke Keele

Ilya Shpitser

Dylan Small