Data Driven: Dr. Qin Liu Elected President of Philadelphia Chapter of American Statistical Association
Dr. Qin Liu, professor in Wistar’s Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis Program and a biostatistician professional that applies statistical methods to biomedical research, was elected President of the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Statistical Association (ASA) for 2025-2026. A professional organization for the statistical community in the region, the Philadelphia Chapter organizes local conferences, seminars, career panels, and networking to support the professional growth of its over 400 members from academia, private industry and education. The national ASA is the largest statistical society in the U.S., drawing members from Canada and the international community.
Dr. Liu will lead the Philadelphia Chapter of the ASA to create initiatives and opportunities to enhance professional development, and looks forward to offering great mentoring programs, especially to junior members, including students.
“We want to offer career panel events to postgraduates, graduates and undergraduates so they know other statisticians’ career paths and experiences, which will provide them examples and guidance for their own career development.” said Dr. Liu. “We also have a program matching mentors & mentees, which is tricky to match areas of interest but important and fruitful for everyone. I would like to help connect Wistar’s computational professionals to Philadelphia Chapter members who have expertise in statistics or bioinformatics when we have such needs.”
At Wistar since 2011, Dr. Liu explained the different groups that make up bioinformatics and biostatistics at Wistar.
“There are unique & special computational groups at Wistar and we are related but distinct in the work we do. For example, bioinformatics applies, develops and creates tools and algorithms to analyze the big data around the biological genome. We biostatisticians use statistical methods to analyze biomedical datasets, draw conclusions and offer statistical support to researchers for experiment designs, in vitro and in vivo drug combination studies, or even clinicians for clinical trials.”
Though Dr. Liu doesn’t work directly with Wistar’s bioinformatics group, the doors are open to each other.
“We knock on each other’s doors and say, ‘Oh, I have a question—can we discuss?’ Then we talk about statistical methods and get into the details of how to apply them for data analysis. For great science, we all need statistics.”
In August, Philadelphia hosts the 13th International Conference on Multiple Comparison Procedures (MCP 2025), and Dr. Liu serves in the local organizing committee and is leading the volunteers from the Philadelphia Chapter of ASA to support the operation of the conference. “MCP 2025 is a great opportunity to network and learn more but ultimately this experience as a volunteer is about service and how we serve others and give back to our scientific communities.”