Body
Amy Zhou, PhD, grew up in a Chicago-area family where numbers and critical thinking skills were part of her everyday life. Her father was an engineer and her mother was a statistician who worked in the pharmaceutical industry. By the time she was a teenager, Zhou was so passionate about math and science that she was accepted at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA), a three-year residential high school in suburban Aurora focused on ¡°nurturing creative, ethical, scientific minds that advance the human condition.¡±
Zhou loved the residential campus and the friends she made at IMSA, including a boy who would later become her husband. When it came time for college, she chose Wellesley, a small women¡¯s liberal arts college outside Boston, and decided to major in chemistry. She wasn¡¯t sure what direction she wanted to go with her degree until she did a clinical research internship at Boston Children¡¯s Hospital. ¡°Chemistry can be a very solo pursuit, one person in a lab,¡± she notes. ¡°But after my internship, I knew I would enjoy clinical research more. You get to interact more with people, whether it¡¯s patients or clinicians.¡±
Zhou always planned to return to Chicago after college. She landed a job at Lurie Children¡¯s Hospital in downtown Chicago and got involved in a multi-center study looking at the effects of early rehabilitation for children with traumatic brain injuries. But when the data collection phase was complete, the researchers discovered they hadn¡¯t enrolled enough participants to answer all the questions they had initially posed. ¡°The study was underpowered,¡± Zhou remembers. ¡°That was what really got me interested in biostatistics. I realized we might have been able to adjust the study along the way. There were a lot of different things we could have done.¡±
She decided to get a master¡¯s degree in biostatistics from Northwestern University while she was still working. She hoped that a master¡¯s would be enough to transition to the field of biostatistics but several of her mentors urged her to go further and get a PhD. She was accepted to Harvard University¡¯s program in 2019 and headed back to the Boston area while her fianc¨¦ was working in Chicago. She finished her doctorate in 2024 and was looking for positions when she spotted a posting for a biostatistician at Shirley Ryan Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ in Chicago. ¡°I didn¡¯t expect to hear back from them. I know these things move quickly,¡± she says. ¡°I was very pleasantly surprised when I heard back.¡±
Zhou started her new gig in January. She is the only biostatistician on staff at Shirley Ryan Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ and has already fielded more than 40 requests for her help. ¡°Some of them are one-time meetings about ¡®Is this the correct statistical method to use? How do I design a study that will generate data to answer my questions?¡¯ Some projects are multi-year ongoing clinical studies. That makes the job really fun,¡± Zhou says.
She knows that statisticians in general, and biostatisticians in particular, are in high demand these days and she has a variety of career options. However, she always wanted to return to clinical research. ¡°I¡¯m passionate about improving general health outcomes,¡± she says. ¡°I want to do something that has a positive impact on society at the end of the day.¡±
Her supervisor, Allen Heinemann, PhD, director of the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research at Shirley Ryan Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾, is glad she made that choice. ¡°Amy is sharp, energetic and resourceful and consistently looking for ways to help principal investigators design studies and analyze data,¡± he says. ¡°It was a real delight to extend an offer to someone whose career interests aligned so closely with the hospital¡¯s mission. Some people are motivated by making an impact, and that¡¯s Amy.¡±