I am delighted to officially announce that at this year's AGM you will have a genuine choice for the next Chair of PSI. We have two excellent candidates in Naomi Givens, Contracts & Partnership Director and Lucy Rowell, Conference Chair. The biographies of both candidates can be found below and they will also be sharing their visions for PSI with you in the next few weeks. In addition to this, interviews with Naomi and Lucy will be shared via a podcast ("The Effective Statistician") in early May.

You will receive voting information from the Electoral Reform Services on 24th April 2018, through which you can cast your vote for the next PSI Chair along with the other resolutions. If you do not receive details on how to vote, please contact psi@mci-group.com. Please note, in order to make the Society more inclusive we recently changed the membership categories and as a result of this change, the vast majority of you are now Full Members and therefore have a vote. If you are unsure, please check your profile on the members area of the PSI website.

I encourage each of you to read Naomi and Lucy's biographies and visions for the Society and to use your vote.

Best wishes,

Nigel Howitt
Chair, PSI 


Naomi Givens
Director, Statistics (GlaxoSmithKline)

Naomi joined the PSI External Affairs Committee in 2011 and is proud to have led the creation of the Before the Headlines initiative with the Science Media Centre, a service which provides science journalists in the mainstream media with a statistical critique of a piece of research as an aid for writing their articles accurately. She joined the PSI Board of Directors in 2014 as the Contracts and Partnerships Director, recently negotiating a new three year contact with MCI holding cost rises in line with inflation. Naomi was a member of the Joint Assessment Committee for the proposed merger with the RSS during which time she also chaired weekly meetings between the Yes and No campaign teams putting her skills of diplomacy to the test. Naomi represents PSI on the Council for Biopharmaceutical Statisticians engaging with similar pharmaceutical statistics organisations around the world. As Chair, Naomi aims to ‘future proof’ PSI through improved engagement with members and welcoming data scientists into the PSI fold.

Naomi has worked as a Clinical Statistician in the HIV therapeutic area at GlaxoSmithKline for over 17 years. Having joined as a recent graduate providing support to the Clinical Virology department, she has progressed through roles, across phases II to IV with increasing responsibility and currently manages a team of Statisticians supporting Pfizer and GSK’s joint venture ViiV Healthcare.


Lucy Rowell
Senior Principal Statistical Scientist (Roche) 

Outside work Lucy loves eating, reading, meditating, going to see live bands and hiking with her husband Simon, and their pug Buddy.