A Conversation with Ross Prentice

Abstract

Ross L. Prentice received his B.Sc. from the University ofWaterlooand his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He joined the University of Washington (UW) and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (theHutch) in 1974, and is currently Professor of Biostatistics at these institutions.He was Senior Vice President at the Hutch, and Director of its PublicHealth Sciences Division, for more than 25 years.Dr. Prentice’s expertise and research interests are in the fields of biostatistics,epidemiology, and disease prevention. He played a central role in theconception, design, and implementation of the Women’s Health Initiative. Instatistical and medical literature he has over 500 scientific papers, includingmore than 40 with 500 or more citations. His substantial contributions to thetheory of population and clinical research include the use of surrogate endpointsand case-cohort designs and other areas such as survival analysis, nutritionalepidemiology, genetic epidemiology, biomarkers, and measurementerror. Dr. Prentice is recognized for his mentoring of students and junior colleagues,and for his generous collaborations.Dr. Prentice has received numerous awards for his work, including an honorarydoctorate in mathematics from the University of Waterloo, the MantelAward for Lifetime Contributions to Statistics in Epidemiology from theAmerican Statistical Association, the Mortimer Spiegelman Award from theAmerican Public Health Association, the Committee of Presidents of StatisticalSocieties Presidents’ Award and RA Fisher Award, the Marvin ZelenLeadership Award for Outstanding Achievement in Statistical Science fromHarvard University, the American Association of Cancer Research/AmericanCancer Society Award for Research Excellence in Cancer Epidemiology andPrevention, and the American Association for Cancer Research Team ScienceAward. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine/National Academyof Medicine in 1990. The Ross L. Prentice Endowed Professorship of BiostatisticalCollaboration was created at the UW in 2005 and has been awardedevery year since its inception. The interior space of the Public Health Sciencesbuilding at the Hutch has been named the Ross L. Prentice Atrium.In his spare time, Ross enjoys sports including water skiing, golf, running,and spending time with his wife, Didi, and with his daughters, sons-in-law,and grandchildren. He ran daily from when he was in his 20s until his kneesobjected about 10 years ago.This interview took place with Li Hsu and Charles Kooperberg via Zoomin December 2020