The American Statistical Association (ASA) is honoring Virginia Tech College of Science Dean Sally C. Morton with its Health Policy Statistics Section’s 2018 Long-Term Excellence Award.
Morton received the honor at the International Conference on Health Policy Statistics, held last week in Charleston, South Carolina. The award recognizes Morton for her “outstanding contributions to the development of statistical methods and innovative statistical applications to health care policy and health services research, for increasing the awareness of health policy statistics in the statistical community, and for significant mentoring and service that advances the aims of the Health Policy Statistics Section.”
Morton’s methodological research focuses on evidence synthesis, particularly the aggregation of studies via meta-analysis. Among her books is “Methods in Comparative Effectiveness Research,” which Morton co-edited with fellow biostatistician Constantine Gatsonis of Brown University.
She joined Virginia Tech in 2016. She previously served as chair of the Department of Biostatistics in the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, where she also directed the Comparative Effectiveness Research Center in the Health Policy Institute. Before entering academia, Morton was vice president for statistics and epidemiology at RTI International and head of the RAND Corporation Statistics Group.
Morton served as president of the ASA in 2009 and chair of Section U (Statistics) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2013, and she is a Fellow of both organizations.
Last year, Morton was honored with the 16th Annual Janet L. Norwood Award by the University of Alabama at Birmingham, recognizing Morton’s outstanding career achievement by a woman in the statistical sciences.
Morton holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematical sciences, a master’s degree in operations research, and a doctoral degree in statistics, all from Stanford University, as well as a master’s degree in statistics from the London School of Economics.
