By Erin Jester
Ji-Hyun Lee, DrPH, has always believed true leadership begins with service to others.
This philosophy and her expertise earned Lee, a professor in the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions’ Department of Biostatistics and associate director for Cancer Quantitative Sciences at the UF Health Cancer Institute, the role of 120th president of the American Statistical Association for 2025.
And while her presidency of the largest professional group for statisticians and data scientists in the world has ended, Lee has no plans to stop leading or serving her community.
“I will continue to amplify voices, create opportunities and help strengthen the profession we all care about,” she wrote in a farewell letter in the ASA’s member magazine. “I will continue working alongside you, not from the front, but from within the community that made me who I am.”
Before joining UF’s biostatistics faculty in 2018, Lee spent 11 years at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, beginning as an assistant professor and eventually becoming a tenured full professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics. During that time, she also held professorships in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of South Florida College of Public Health at the University of South Florida College of Medicine. For four years after that, Lee was the head of the Biostatistics Group at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center.
In her 20-plus years in cancer research, Lee has written more than 210 peer-reviewed articles and has held leadership roles in multiple professional organizations, including three years of service on the ASA’s Board of Directors and a term as president of the Caucus for Women in Statistics.
Lee assumed the ASA presidency with three goals: elevating the role of statistics in science and society, expanding professional development and leadership programs, and broadening and diversifying ASA membership.
Continuing a project from Lee’s term as president-elect, a collaboration between ASA and Nature Medicine led to the recruitment of 48 statisticians from a variety of medical specialties to the journal’s first statistical advisory panel. Due to the initiative’s success, Nature Aging is now exploring a similar partnership with an aging-focused ASA interest group.
Under her leadership, the ASA announced a clinical trial certificate program launching in spring 2026 that aims to prepare statisticians, biostatisticians and data scientists to excel in clinical research.
Above all, Lee strives to keep the human element at the forefront. In visits to universities, at conferences and in conversation with ASA members throughout the year, she discussed finding joy in work that is sometimes invisible, how to show impact when numbers can’t tell the whole story and framing data as traces of human life rather than abstractions.
“What moved me most was seeing the dedication within our community, people working in every corner of science, health, business, and society to make life better for others,” she wrote to her ASA colleagues. “Even when your work is unseen, its impact is undeniable.”