Susan S. Ellenberg, PhD, will serve as interim chair of the DBEI, as Harold I. Feldman, MD, MSCE, completes his six-year term and the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) begins a national search for his successor. Dr. Ellenberg will assume the role on October 1, announced PSOM Dean J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD, and Executive Vice Dean Jonathan A. Epstein, MD.
Dr. Ellenberg has been a DBEI faculty member since 2004, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. For many years, she served the PSOM as Associate Dean for Clinical Research. Her research has focused on practical problems and ethical issues in designing, conducting and analyzing data from clinical trials. She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Society for Clinical Trials and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute.
Dr. Ellenberg is the 2019 recipient of the Florence Nightingale David Award, a biannual award given jointly by the major North American statistical societies to a female statistician for outstanding achievements. At Penn, in addition to her teaching and administrative duties, she serves as senior statistician for several multicenter clinical trials and directs the Biostatistics Core of the Penn Center for AIDS Research. She also chairs the organizing committee for the annual Penn conference on statistical issues in clinical trials.
Prior to her appointment at Penn, Dr. Ellenberg held several senior level positions in the federal government. She was the Director of the Office of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the first Chief of the Biostatistics Research Branch in the Division of AIDS, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The PSOM will convene a search committee this fall for the next Chair of DBEI; Mitchell Schnall, MD, PhD, the Eugene P. Pendergrass Professor of Radiology and Chair of the Radiology Department, will chair the committee.