Dionne L. Price is an American

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

who works as a division director in the Office of Biostatistics of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, in the US

Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respon ...

. Her division provides statistical advice "used in the regulation of anti-infective, anti-viral, ophthalmology, and transplant drug products".

Education and career

Price is

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

, and grew up in

Portsmouth, Virginia Portsmouth is an independent city in southeast Virginia and across the Elizabeth River from Norfolk. As of the 2020 census, the population was 97,915. It is part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area. The Norfolk Naval Shipyard and Naval M ...

; her mother was a schoolteacher. She majored in applied mathematics at

Norfolk State University Norfolk State University (NSU) is a public historically black university in Norfolk, Virginia. It is a member of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and Virginia High-Tech Partnership. History The institution was founded on September 18, 1935 a ...

, earned a master's degree from the

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sy ...

, and completed her Ph.D. at

Emory University Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...

in 2000. Her dissertation, ''Survival Models for Heterogeneous Populations with Cure'', was supervised by

Amita Manatunga Amita Kalyanie Manatunga is a Sri Lankan biostatistician who works as a professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, where she is also affiliated with the Winship Cancer Institute. Her res ...

, and with it she became the first African-American to earn a doctorate in biostatistics at Emory. After finishing her doctorate, she joined the Food and Drug Administration.

Recognition

Price was the keynote speaker at StatFest 2016, a one-day conference at Howard University organized by the American Statistical Association Committee on Minorities in Statistics to encourage statistical students from underrepresented groups. She was elected as a

Fellow of the American Statistical Association Like many other academic professional societies, the American Statistical Association (ASA) uses the title of Fellow of the American Statistical Association as its highest honorary grade of membership. The number of new fellows per year is limited ...

in 2018. She was "elected the 118th president of the American Statistical Association (ASA). She will serve a one-year term as president-elect beginning January 1, 2022; her term as president becomes effective January 1, 2023. She was elected to the 2022 class of Fellows of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

(AAAS). Price will be the first African-American president of the ASA."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Price, Dionne Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American statisticians American women statisticians African-American statisticians Norfolk State University alumni University of North Carolina alumni Emory University alumni 21st-century African-American scientists 21st-century American mathematicians 21st-century American women scientists 21st-century African-American women Presidents of the American Statistical Association People from Portsmouth, Virginia Food and Drug Administration people Mathematicians from Virginia Biostatisticians