YODA 2.0 Biography of Participants

Mentors

David Zhang (LinkedIn)

Bio: David Zhang, Ph.D., is Senior Vice President and Head of Biometrics and Data Management at Alumis Inc. As part of the founding management team at Alumis, he served as Chief Information Officer responsible for building up capabilities in Biometrics, IT, Facilities and Investor Relations during the early days of the company. Before joining Alumis, David was Vice President of biometrics, data science and digital health at Bristol Myers Squibb following the company’s acquisition of MyoKardia. At MyoKardia, David built the advanced analytics capabilities from the ground up to enable the successful completion of critical study design, data readouts and New Drug Application submission of Mavacamten (CAMZYOS). Prior to MyoKardia, David spent 15 years at Roche/Genentech with increasing responsibilities leading and building biostatistics and strategic innovation functions. He began his pharmaceutical industry career at Eli Lilly and Abbott Laboratories after receiving his Ph.D. in biostatistics with a minor in genetics from UCLA and completing post-doctoral research at Columbia University. In addition to his day job, David is a founding member of the Bay Area Biopharm Statistics Workshop (BBSW) and served as its President in 2022.

What you hope to get out of this experience: Technical, Communications, Time-management, Continued Learning

Jing Huang (LinkedIn)

Bio: Jing Huang received her B.A. in Statistics and Probability from Peking University and her Ph.D.in Statistics and M.S. in Epidemiology from Stanford University. She has been working in the biomedical field for over 20 years and her research interest focuses on statistical methodologies in clinical trial design, genomic analysis, and machine learning. She is currently the SVP of Bioinformatics & Data Science at Veracyte Inc., a molecular diagnostic company, responsible for creating, implementing and executing bioinformatics pipelines, algorithm development, and statistical analyses across all phases of product development. Jing has co-authored more than 30 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals with near ten thousand citations and is co-inventor of over 20 patent filings. Jing has been elected as a Fellow of American Statistical Association in 2023 to recognize her outstanding contributions to the medical research community in the field of statistics; for numerous statistical innovations in genomic tests; and for exemplary leadership and community service to the profession. Besides her daily work, she actively promotes data science through many of her volunteer activities: She is the founding president of DahShu, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with the mission of promoting research and education in data science. She is currently the chapter representative of American Statistical Association San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (SFASA); and has served the organization for many years in various roles including Past president (term 2016-2017), President (term 2015-2016), President Elect (term 2014-2015) and VP of Biostatistics (term 2013-2014). She was the general co-chair and local organization chair of the Fourteenth Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Conference (APBC 2016) as well as the DahShu 2017 Scientific Symposium on Computational Precision Health (CPH 2017).

What you hope to get out of this experience: Early in my career, there was little emphasis on interpersonal skills, strategic approach to reach alignment, personal branding, etc. all these became critically important while advancing our careers. I would love to share with the next generation what I have learned and also exchange ideas in this wonderful YODA community so we support each other, foster strong bond and learn together.

Fun fact: I love gardening but my passion and eagerness are so disproportionately greater than my skills and knowledge.

Whedy Wang (Linkedin)

Bio: Whedy has over 25 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, including directing biometrics efforts in more than ten NDA and sNDA submissions, three advisory committee meetings and multiple EX-US submissions, all leading to successful approvals. Whedy is currently VP of Biometrics & Digital Science at Alector, a biotech company that is on a mission to slow the progression of neurodegenerative diseases and to one day prevent their occurrence. Prior to joining Alector, she held several senior positions including Vice President of Biometrics and Data Science at Theravance Biopharma, VP of Biometrics at Gilead Sciences Palo Alto (formerly CV Therapeutics), Senior Vice President of Bioinformatics at Orexigen, and Executive Director of Biometrics at Affymax.

What you hope to get out of this experience: I was lucky to have people who were kind enough to offer their advice and guidance throughout my career. I would like to repay their kindness by paying it forward. I also have a fair share of set backs so I know some encouraging words and attentive listening could go a long way.

Fun fact: I love Snoopy and dream about retiring by the beach.

Chito Hernandez (LinkedIn)

Bio: Chito Hernandez is a life science executive and PhD statistician who has led multiple organizations throughout his career. He is currently Group Vice President of Data Science at BioMarin, a world leading biotechnology company focused on rare diseases. In addition, Chito is the Founder and Senior Partner of FocusQ, an executive consulting firm that he established in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Before his current roles, Chito held Vice President positions at Elan Pharmaceuticals and Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy R&D. He has also made noteworthy contributions to the development of several drugs, eight of which have received regulatory approvals, with seven of them being the first in their class.

Chito is a mentor and coach who provides guidance and support to a diverse group of executives, helping them cultivate self-awareness and mindfulness in both their personal and professional lives. Through his coaching, he empowers these leaders to create more meaningful and impactful work that aligns with their values and goals.

What you hope to get out of this experience: It is extremely important to train the next generation of leaders. I want to help broaden the impact of statisticians beyond the typical job expectations that we have been accustomed to.

Fun fact: I am trying to get much, much better at shooting hoops.

Merrill Birkner (Linkedin)

Bio: Merrill Birkner is the Vice President of Portfolio Strategy and Analytics at Gilead Sciences. She is responsible for supporting portfolio productivity and strategy through portfolio-level analyses, insights, tools, and recommendations for the achievement of corporate goals, pipeline planning, and decision‐making. Prior to Gilead, Merrill led the Portfolio Management, Operations, and Alliance Management functions at 23andMe, where she was responsible for portfolio & program management, alliance management, commercial assessments, and the operations of the Therapeutics organization. Prior to 23andMe, Merrill spent over a decade at Genentech where she had roles across the development and commercial organizations. Merrill began her career as a biostatistician in Genentech’s Product Development organization. She expanded her business expertise with leadership roles in the company’s commercial organization, portfolio planning, and business operations.

Merrill received her Ph.D. in Biostatistics and an M.P.H. in Epidemiology & Biostatistics from U.C. Berkeley. Her undergraduate studies were at the University of Maryland, College Park where she received a B.S. in Biology.

What you hope to get out of this experience: Help mentor in the areas of leadership, career development, networking, communication

Ted Lystig (Linkedin)

Bio: Dr. Theodore (Ted) Lystig is SVP, Chief Analytics Officer at BridgeBio, where he provides leadership and guidance in the use of robust statistical and research design methods throughout the company. He also holds the position of Adjunct Assistant Professor within the Division of Biostatistics at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Lystig is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and an elected Member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI). He is a founding officer and past Chair for the ASA Section on Medical Devices and Diagnostics, Chair-elect for the ASA Biopharmaceutical Section, an Executive Committee member of the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI), Advisory Council member of the San Francisco Chapter of the ASA, a Board of Directors member of the Bay Area Biotech-Pharma Statistics Workshop (BBSW), and a Board of Directors member of the Society for Clinical Trials. He received his B.A. degree in Mathematics from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Biostatistics from the University of Washington in Seattle and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Chalmers Technical University in Gothenburg, Sweden, in statistical genetics. Prior to joining BridgeBio in 2021, he was the Global Head of Biostatistics and a Technical Fellow at Medtronic. Earlier in his career he held positions of increasing responsibility as a biostatistician for AstraZeneca in Molndal, Sweden, and Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Dr. Lystig is an internationally recognized industry leader in statistical methodology, especially in the area of active surveillance for medical devices. He is a frequent speaker at international statistics meetings and has given over 100 invited presentations at venues including Stanford, Harvard, ANVISA, and US FDA.

What you hope to get out of this experience: At many times throughout my career, I did not have the benefit of ready access to someone with deeper understanding of and/or greater experience in an area in which I was working. In contrast, I observed how much easier life was for colleagues that did have the benefit of such access. I participate as a mentor because I want more persons to have the positive impact associated with close alignment to someone that can assist them, rather than the more challenging experience of working through challenges on one's own.

Important skills that have been critical in my career include technical mastery, strong communication skills, time and project management skills, the ability to work well with others, and politeness.

Fun fact: I have citizenship in three separate countries, including one in which I've never lived.

Ning Leng (LinkedIn)

Bio: Ning Leng is a People and Product Lead in Product Development Data Sciences in Roche-Genentech. Ning joined Roche-Genentech in 2016 as a statistician in the oncology early development and personalized healthcare group. Ning has worked on both early and late phase oncology development, with a special interest in utilizing diverse data sources and advanced methodologies to generate insights for personalized healthcare. Ning is an advocate of automation, open sourcing and open collaboration in pharma. She is also passionate in connecting people and helping people find new interests and opportunities. She serves as Roche representative on the R consortium board, co-leads the R consortium R submission working group, and co-leads the Meetup series of the Bay-area Biotech-pharma Statistics Workshop (BBSW). Ning holds a B.S. in Information and Computing Science from Beijing Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Statistics from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

What you hope to get out of this experience: open mindset, networking, challenging the status quo, understanding bigger picture

Katie Harding (LinkedIn)

Bio: I graduated in 2005 with an MSc in Environmental Toxicology. My first job out of school was as a statistician. I liked it so much that I decided to do a career pivot. I took more classes and jobs with data analyst roles. I fully transitioned to Computational Biology while working for Dupont, about 10 years later. I have had the job title Computational Biologist for 4 years. Currently, I work for a company that is going to detect cancer from blood, and I am part of the group submitting completed analysis and reports to the FDA. I have worked in Academia, Government and Industry jobs.

What you hope to get out of this experience: managing upwards and leadership

Fun fact: My current favorite hobby is Outrigger Canoe Paddling, and just did a 10 mile race around Angel Island

Liang Fang (Linkedin)

Bio: Liang is the founding president of BBSW. In 2018, he initiated the idea of BBSW and worked with the Bay Area biotech and pharma companies, academia and non-profit organizations on a successful inauguration of the conference. He also founded the BBSW nonprofit organization to support the conference. He is currently the Vice President and Head of Data Science in Nuvation Bio Inc. Prior to Nuvation, he worked in multiple Bay Area companies including Amgen, Genentech, Gilead, MyoKardia, and Bolt Biotherapeutics. He authored 30+ scientific publications and edited one book in Statistics. He received his PhD in Statistics from Kansas State University.

What you hope to get out of this experience: Currently, I am passionate about helping those who are new to small biotech world or are considering switching the career path from large companies to small startups.

Mentees

Anqi Zhu (LinkedIn, Website)

Bio: I have a PhD in Biostatistics from UNC Chapel Hill. After graduation I spent two years as a computational biologist at 23andMe before joining Genentech as a senior scientist in Bioinformatics. I evaluate, develop and apply advanced statistical methods to next generation sequencing data, human genetics data and cell image data. I usually also develop R packages that implement the methods I developed and make it available to public for ease of use. One fun fact about being a statistician is that I appreciate the world better in the probability point of view. I find myself passionate about healthcare, and have been working many aspects in pre-clinical world (genetics, genomics and imaging). I am hoping to have the chance to work more in the clinical studies in my future career, and explore other opportunities.

What you hope to get out of this experience: career options, leadership, time management

Fun fact: In my spare time I like singing, drawing acrylic paint and play jigsaw puzzles.

Jiying Zou (LinkedIn)

Bio: My academic training is in applied statistics, always with a biomedical focus. I completed my BA Statistics at UC Berkeley (c/2018) and MS Statistics at Stanford University (c/o 2021). My motivation comes from the fact that I believe "without health, we have nothing", and so I want to dedicate my career to finding ways to improve people's health in all different ways and advancing the healthcare industry with cutting-edge technologies and strategic decision-making. I have done research projects in assessing the effects of environmental exposures on epigenetic changes and in the design and analysis of clinical trials. Currently one project has been published and one is submitted for review. In terms of work experience, I have uncovered fraud, waste, and abuse in medical claims at a startup, improved the state of public health messaging worldwide through a suite of digital products and international collaborations on Facebook during the COVID pandemic, and am currently in a new role using real-world data to make an impact on pharmaceutical development and access. I have also dabbled in projects related to ML and AI, automating clinical note generation back in the days of GPT-2 and identifying brain hemorrhages using computer vision. In the future, I hope to continue to uncover ways to use existing and new technologies to bring value to health and healthcare, and to craft my career to be well-positioned to do so.

What you hope to gt out of this experience: I hope to learn about how to turn an idea or inspiration into a team, a project, or a movement, and how to increase and promote cross-collaborative efforts across interested parties. I want to know more about how to effectively manage upwards to achieve my career goals, and how to create an effective personal brand.

Fun fact: I am very much into social dance, and have performed with the 2023 Stanford Viennese Ball Opening Committee!

Chenyu Li (LinkedIn)

Bio:

Academic Experience: PhD and Bachelor in Biological Sciences, Postdoc in Oncology, Master in Biomedical Informatics.

Industry Background: Bioinformatics, Research and Project Management.

Career interests and aspirations: informatics, statistics and biomedical data analysis.

What you hope to get out of this experience: managing upwards, career options, networking and relationship-building, innovation, personal branding (seems all like good topics)

Fun fact: hiking, biking, cooking

Anwesha Mukherjee (LinkedIn)

Bio: I graduated from Florida State University with PhD in Statistics in 2018 and have been working in the biopharmaceuticals industry as a biostatistician since then. I am a Associate Director at a biotech company, Apellis Pharmaceuticals. Previously, I have also work in both oncology and other therapeutic areas at Merck and AbbVie.

What you hope to get out of his experience: Career management, networking

Jingyang Zhang (LinkedIn)

Bio: After obtaining PhD in Biostatistics from University of Iowa in 2012, I first started my career at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Hutch), working on statistical models in HIV prevention clinical trials. In 2018, I decided to take the opportunity at GRAIL to work on the Multi-Cancer Early Detection (MCED) area. In 2021, I switched my gear again into the oncology drug development, at AstraZeneca. I am always interested in the clinical trials designs and related statistical applications in oncology.

What you hope to get out of his experience: Leadership, managing upwards, and influencing skills especially in the meetings with senior stakeholders.

Fun fact: I used to be an avid runner, training for marathons, before having my twins.

Victor Huang (LinkedIn)

Bio: Victor Huang recently joined AbbVie as a statistician working on oncology. Before this, Victor was a statistician at Genentech working on oncology for a few years. Before Genentech, Victor served as a visiting assistant professor in statistics at UC Santa Cruz and obtained a PhD in statistics from Virginia Tech. Victor is passionated about innovative trial design, computational statistics, and Bayesian statistics. Moving forward, Victor is aspired to further leverage his skills to make a bigger impact in the biotech industry.

What you hope to get out of this experience: As a mentee, I hope to improve on and learn more about leadership, career options, networking and relationship-building, and innovation.

Yannan Tang (LinkedIn, WEbsite)

Bio: I am Yannan Tang, MS in Statistics from George Washington University, PhD in Statistics from UC Irvine. I joined Genentech late phase non-oncology group as a biostatistician in 2020. I have been working on trials in Ophthalmology and Respiratory TAs.

My PhD dissertation focuses on Generalized Additive Models and extensions for geospatial analysis. I am also interested in statistical topics including mixed effects models and causal inference. I grew my passion and expertise on drug development and clinical trials at my current role and expect to learn more about this career and industry in this YODA program.

What you hope to get out of this experience: As a mentee with 3-year experience, I learned a lot as well as the fact that there is much more to learn. At YODA, I would appreciate advice about principles, managing upwards, networking as a biostatistician to get myself better at work . Also, I do need to explore the career options, which is what I am not familiar with yet.

Fun fact: I am a diehard geek statistician. I am a soccer fan. I love cooking. I became a Tesla owner recently and enjoy driving it so far.

Jenny Yuan

Bio: I have been working as a statistical programmer in the Pharma industry for about 20 years, in start-up Biotech companies, big Pharma companies across multiple therapeutic areas. In the past so many years I was seeking professional growth, career achievements. I got my master of science degree in Biostatistics from University of California, Los Angeles in 2003.

What you hope to get out of this experience: Sense of fulfillment from work, networking and soft skills.

Godwin Yung (LinkedIn)

Bio: Godwin Yung joined Genentech in 2020 as a member of the statistical methods, collaboration, and outreach (MCO) group. His position entails conducting methods research (e.g., survival), enabling the use of the most appropriate statistical methodology in pharmaceutical development (e.g., adaptive designs, borrowing external information, surrogate endpoints), and collaborating with external stakeholders to advance the field of statistics (e.g., Oncology Estimand Working Group, BBSW). Prior to Genentech, Godwin worked as a statistician at Takeda in Boston, MA for 4 years, spending half of his time as a methodological consultant for other statisticians and the other half of his time as a clinical trial statistician (payer reimbursement, Ph3 oncology trial). Godwin received his B.A. in Mathematics from Reed College and Ph.D. in Biostatistics from Harvard University.

What you hope to get out of this experience: In the past, I took my studies/profession very seriously, going above and beyond and proactively learning new things out of a passion for statistics/mathematics. But as a family man now, I find myself spread thin across supporting my wife’s career, my children’s well-being, and my own career. From this experience, I hope to be challenged and inspired into thinking what success/fulfillment would look like over time (short term to long term) and across the key areas of my life (work, family, and faith). I am also genuinely interested in learning more about myself—my strengths and areas for improvement—so that I may be an increasing blessing to others.

Fun fact: You can’t tell by my 5’9” frame, but I played basketball at the collegiate level. (Reed is a small liberal arts college though, so it’s not like I am a Division I athlete!)