2014 Cupples Award Honors David DeMets for Excellence in Biostatistics.
David L. DeMets, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the recipient of the 2014 L. Adrienne Cupples Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research, and Service in Biostatistics.
In accepting the award on April 3, DeMets delivered a talk on the challenges of conducting clinical trials from the perspective of a longtime observer of trends and innovations. For the past 40 years, DeMets has focused much of his career on the design, conduct, monitoring, analysis and presentation of clinical trials.
He has developed several statistical methods, especially for interim monitoring, and has collaborated on many clinical trials in cardiology and pulmonary diseases, AIDS, diabetes and osteoporosis.
“Clinical trials, especially randomized clinical trials, have been and will remain the gold standard for the evaluation of new interventions, be they pharmaceutical, biologic, medical device, procedures or behavioral modifications,” DeMets wrote in an introduction to his lecture.
For 27 years, DeMets was Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics in the UW School of Medicine & Public Health, and currently serves on the Data and Safety Monitoring Committees for several NIH- and industry-sponsored clinical trials.
The annual Cupples Award recognizes a biostatistician whose academic achievements reflect the contributions to biostatistics exemplified by L. Adrienne Cupples, past chair and current professor of biostatistics at the Boston University School of Public Health.
Dr. Cupples joined the BUSPH faculty at the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) in 1981 and later served as founding Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Co-Executive Director of the Graduate Program in Biostatistics.
During her time at BUSPH, she has advanced the field of biostatistics through extensive publications in major journals and book chapters on collaborative and methodological research, development and effective teaching of a wide range of biostatistics courses, and mentorship of numerous graduate students and faculty.