The Applied Public Health Statistics section of the American Public Health Association has named Raphael Gottardo, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the winner of its 2018 Mortimer Spiegelman Award. The Spiegelman Award honors statisticians under the age of 40 who have made outstanding contributions to health statistics, especially public health statistics.

“It is a privilege to be recognized by my peers and win such a well-respected award,” Gottardo said. “Researching ways to harness the immune system to prevent infections and cure cancer is a massive undertaking that involves analyzing and integrating a large amount of data, and I’m proud that my work is helping other scientists turn that trove of information into actionable insights.”

Gottardo’s work focuses on developing methods and tools to analyze large immunological data sets generated by novel assay technologies and helping scientists understand the results of their experiments.

“Dr. Gottardo has an outstanding ability to apply an integrated, reproducible and open approach to his research,” said Fred Hutch colleague and biostatistician Peter Gilbert. “I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with Raphael on many HIV vaccine projects over the years and his fusion of computational immunology, computer science and statistical research is second to none.”

The Mortimer Spiegelman Award is named for demographer, actuary and biostatistician Mortimer Spiegelman and has been presented annually since 1970. See https://www.apha.org/apha-communities/member-sections/applied-public-health-statistics/who-we-are/awards