2017 Award Winners

Distinguished Service to SER

Dr. Polly Marchbanks

Polly Marchbanks received a BSN and MSN from The University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in epidemiology from The University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston.

In 1984, while presenting dissertation results at her first SER annual meeting, Polly was recruited to CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), a two-year post-doctoral program in applied epidemiology. She entered the EIS in 1985 and later became the first woman and first non-physician to serve as Chief of the EIS. Read more

While Chief, Polly led the training of EIS Officers and supervised the administration of over 300 epidemic aid missions that helped control public health emergencies around the world, including hantavirus in the southwestern US, E. coli O157:H7 from undercooked hamburgers at a fast food restaurant chain, cryptosporidiosis in the Milwaukee water supply which sickened 400,000 persons, devastation from Hurricane Andrew, and a massive refugee crisis in Burundi.

Polly’s 30-year career at CDC spanned a broad range of topics, and her central focus was research and translation activities in the field of women’s health. As Team Leader of Fertility Epidemiology Studies in the Division of Reproductive Health, she was a Principal Investigator of the NICHD Women’s Contraceptive and Reproductive Experiences Study, a member of the Oxford Collaborative Groups on Reproductive Cancer, a technical advisor to WHO on contraceptive issues, and a leader in the development and implementation of global and domestic evidence-based family planning guidelines which are used in over 50 countries globally and have changed contraceptive practice in the United States.

Polly has taught epidemiology in Zimbabwe, Romania, Moldova, Republic of Georgia, China, South Africa, and Ghana. She authored over 160 scientific publications and is an elected member of the American Epidemiological Society. She received multiple CDC awards including the Shepard Science Award, the Shepard Lifetime Scientific Achievement Award, the Watson Medal of Excellence, and two Distinguished Service Medals from the US Public Health Service. She is also the recipient of the John Snow Award from the Epidemiology Section of APHA in conjunction with the John Snow Society and Royal Society for Public Health in England.

In 2015, Polly retired from CDC. She is continuing to collaborate on research and translation projects, and she is continuing to serve as an Editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Throughout the years, Polly has been an active member of SER. She served as a Member-at-Large of the Executive Committee, a local host for the annual meeting, and President. In 1992, she proposed to the SER Board an idea for adding a Late-Breaker Session to the annual meeting. The proposal was accepted and, starting in 1993, she coordinated and chaired the SER Late-Breaker Session for 22 years. In 2015, the baton for the Late-Breaker Session passed to other capable hands, and the session continues to be an integral part of the SER annual meeting.

Career Accomplishment

Dr. Kenneth Rothman

Dr. Rothman is a Distinguished Fellow at the Research Triangle Institute, an independent nonprofit research institute dedicated to improving the human condition. He is also a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health. His research interests in epidemiology have spanned a range of health problems that includes cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurologic disease, birth defects, injuries, environmental exposures and drug epidemiology. Read more

Excellence in Education

Dr. Jay Kaufman

Jay S. Kaufman holds a doctorate in epidemiologic science from the University of Michigan (1995). After a post-doctoral position at Loyola Stritch School of Medicine (Chicago, IL) from 1995-1997, he was Medical Epidemiologist at Carolinas Medical Center (Charlotte, NC) from 1997 to 1999. From 1999 through 2008 he held a positions as Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health at Chapel Hill and as Faculty Fellow of the Carolina Population Center. Read more

Brian MacMahon Early Career

Laura Rosella

Dr. Laura Rosella holds a primary role is a full-time tenure-track faculty position in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Dr. Rosella currently holds a Canada Research Chair in Population Health Analytics and appointments at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and Public Health Ontario. She has authored 100 peer-reviewed publications in the area of public health, public health policy, and health services research. Read more

Lilienfeld Postdoctoral Prize Paper

Neal Goldstein

Neal D. Goldstein, PhD, MBI is an infectious disease epidemiologist and research fellow at Christiana Care Health System (Newark, DE), and holds an appointment as assistant research professor in the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health (Philadelphia, PA). His research spans several disciplines including vaccine-preventable diseases, sexual minority health, pediatric infectious diseases, and women’s health surrounding pregnancy. Read more

Tyroler Student Prize Paper

Ellicott Matthay

Ellicott Matthay is a PhD Candidate in Epidemiology at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She received dual bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and Community Health from Tufts University and an MPH in Global Health Metrics and Evaluation from the University of Washington. Her current research focuses on the causes and consequences of community violence, with specific attention to contextual determinants of self-harm and the evaluation of violence-related policies and programs in California. She is invested in novel epidemiologic and biostatistical methods, and in generating actionable evidence that assists high-level decision-makers to shift the major determinants of population health.

SER-SPC Travel Scholarships

SER’s Student and PostDoc Committee offered twelve, $400 travel scholarships to attend SER’s 50th Anniversary Meeting. Click here to learn more about the winners!

Joella Adams

Kara Bensley

Giehae Choi

Jacquelyn Cragg

Saruna Ghimire

Hua Huang

Ellen Jackson

Parisa Karimi

Chisom Odah

Meliha Salahuddin

Eva Tanner

ASA SIE Section Travel Winners

The Section on Statistics in Epidemiology (SIE) of the American Statistical Association (ASA) awarded 5 individuals travel scholarships to attend SER’s 50th Anniversary Meeting. Click here to learn about the winners!