By Erin Jester
In aviation and in biostatistics, success is often dependent on one factor: communication.
“Being a pilot, communication is huge,” said University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions alumna Amy Crisp, Ph.D, who flew patrol aircraft for the U.S. Navy for a decade before becoming a biostatistician.
“To prevent mishaps and terrible things happening, it comes down to communication every time.”
Now, Crisp is the director of the UF College of Medicine – Jacksonville Center for Data Solutions, where, among many other duties, she often serves as a communication bridge between medical professionals and statisticians.
Effective collaboration requires making sure someone hears information the way you intended it, being able to hear what others are saying when their communication style is different from yours and asking questions and pushing to understand, she said.
The Center for Data Solutions was created in 2019 to support research at all stages, covering a broad range of topics in health science. Crisp and the three data analysts who work alongside her at the center act as consultants for clinicians, researchers and industry partners conducting investigative work at UF Health Jacksonville.
Since the center is small, Crisp, who started as associate director for analytic services in 2022 before becoming director in 2024, does a little bit of everything: complex data analysis, keeping an eye on funding, making sure projects are a good fit for analysts and, in order to act as translator between researchers and analysts, teaching herself new skills and medical concepts all the time.
“The amount I’ve learned about hernias … never thought that would happen,” she said.
Biostatistics wasn’t initially on her career radar.
Crisp always loved math, so she pursued physics, earning a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. But her specialization in nuclear structure research felt too niche, she said, and she didn’t feel her work was making the world a better place.
When she was younger, Crisp wanted to be a racecar driver or an astronaut. She split the difference and became a Navy pilot after finishing her master’s degree.
Crisp earned another bachelor’s degree, this time in statistics, toward the end of her military career. She discovered “math for medicine,” as she describes her work now, and fell in love. She started a master’s program in biostatistics at UF the day she got out of the Navy.
Crisp was drawn to UF because of the opportunities for infectious disease research and because she already knew she wanted to continue with biostatistics and earn a Ph.D.
“Prior to 2020, I didn’t know how important that was going to be,” she said.
In fact, a turning point in Crisp’s career came as she was finishing her Ph.D. coursework and the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to take off.
Crisp had been paired with Natalie Dean, Ph.D., a former biostatistics faculty member, because of her interest in infectious disease, and had focused on trial design during her doctoral work.
As Dean was pulled away from a study on indoor insecticide spraying to prevent mosquito-borne diseases toward COVID-19 research efforts, she handed off some of her responsibilities to her student.
“That opportunity was enormous for me,” Crisp said. “I’m grateful for that despite the fact that it was daunting at the time.”
Dean, who is now an associate professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, said Crisp was uniquely suited to the challenge — not just because of her mathematical competence, but also because of her organization and ability to execute a project.
“Her career before biostats makes her such a valuable addition to the field,” Dean said. “Amy has been someone I’ve been able to rely on. She really rises to the occasion.”
Crisp is still a part of that research team, performing secondary analyses of the indoor-spraying study now that the trial has come to fruition. She keeps in touch with Dean and occasionally visits her classes to talk with Dean’s students about collaborating with clinicians and other aspects of being a biostatistician.
By the time Crisp completed her Ph.D. in 2022, she had already lined up the biostatistics position at the Center for Data Solutions.
“What allowed me to step right into this position was networking and talking to my professors,” she said. Making and nurturing connections with other people in the field is one of her biggest pieces of advice to students hoping to get their foot in the door.
In addition to her role at the Center for Data Solutions, Crisp has been involved in the consulting arm of the American Statistical Association, the largest professional organization for statisticians, including biostatisticians, in the world.
Her experiences with ASA led to her other piece of advice for budding biostatisticians, one that might seem counterintuitive.
“Don’t get caught up in the details,” she said. “Focus on building a foundation of knowledge, then trust yourself to build on top of that.”