Nancy A. Obuchowski (born 1962) is an American

biostatistician Biostatistics (also known as biometry) are the development and application of statistical methods to a wide range of topics in biology. It encompasses the design of biological experiments, the collection and analysis of data from those experimen ...

whose research concerns the accuracy of image-based medical diagnoses, including the use of

nonparametric statistics Nonparametric statistics is the branch of statistics that is not based solely on parametrized families of probability distributions (common examples of parameters are the mean and variance). Nonparametric statistics is based on either being distr ...

receiver operating characteristic A receiver operating characteristic curve, or ROC curve, is a graphical plot that illustrates the diagnostic ability of a binary classifier system as its discrimination threshold is varied. The method was originally developed for operators of ...

curves, and accounting for the effects of clustered data in this application. She works at the Lerner Research Institute of the Cleveland Clinic as vice chair of Quantitative Health Sciences, with a joint appointment in the Department of Diagnostic Radiology. She is also a professor in the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...

Education and career

Obuchowski majored in biology at the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, mo ...

, graduating in 1984. She went to the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

for graduate study in biostatistics, earning a master's degree in 1987 and completing her Ph.D. in 1991, the year in which she joined the Cleveland Institute.

Books

Obuchowski is a co-author of the book ''Statistical Methods in Diagnostic Medicine'' (with Xiao-Hua Zhou and Donna K. McClish, Wiley, 2002; 2nd ed., 2011). With G. Scott Gazelle, she is co-editor of ''Handbook for Clinical Trials of Imaging and Image-Guided Interventions'' (Wiley, 2016).

Recognition

She was named 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 2008. In 2015, the

University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health The School of Public Health (sometimes shortened to Pitt Public Health) is one of 17 schools at the University of Pittsburgh. The school, founded in 1948, was first led by Thomas Parran, surgeon general of the U.S. Public Health Service. It is ...

gave her their Alumni Award for Research.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Obuchowski, Nancy 1962 births Living people American radiologists Women radiologists American women statisticians American biostatisticians University of New Hampshire alumni University of Pittsburgh alumni Case Western Reserve University faculty Fellows of the American Statistical Association