Dr. Allen Pannell is a lecturer in business analytics and statistics who also teaches graduate and executive education courses. He is the first Amy Foster Memorial Research Fellow, designated for business analytics and statistics faculty whose research affects the life expectancy of those impacted by metastatic breast cancer research. He specializes in business process improvement, leadership, six sigma, strategic planning, and experimental design. Pannell’s research interests are in metastatic breast cancer.
Since 1985, Pannell’s consulting experience included coaching senior executives through major change efforts, including design, planning and implementation. He has successfully worked with numerous manufacturing and service organizations, including Baxter, Rich Products, JSC, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Ford and Cargill.
Pannell received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate in statistics from UT, and he holds a Six Sigma Master Black Belt certification. He was voted Outstanding Faculty by Aerospace and Defense MBA students.
Advisors to the project. These dedicated professionals are providing their assistance and insights to the project. They do not have decision making authority. All the good ideas are theirs, all the bad ones are Allen’s.
Dr. Vinay Prasad is an associate professor in the epidemiology and biostatistics department at the University of California, San Francisco. He studies the quality of research and design of clinical trials in application to oncology and health policy in the VK Prasad lab. He discusses this and other topics in his podcast, Plenary Session, and published books. In total, he has written over 300 academic articles and letters as a hematologist oncologist. In his free time, he enjoys cycling and reading.
Dr. Prasad graduated from Michigan State University (’05), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (’14), and University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine (’09). At Chicago, he was awarded the Chairman’s Award in Internal Medicine. He also trained at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Dr. Tim Panella works at the University of Tennessee Medical Center where he is an associate professor in the division of hematology and oncology. He is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Medical Association, Tennessee Medical Association, and Knoxville Medical Association. His primary interests are breast, head, and neck cancer. He also studies mechanisms to lessen drug resistance in patients with cancer chemotherapy along with physical changes that occur after chemotherapy.
Dr. Panella graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine. He participated in an internship and residency at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center. He completed a fellowship at Duke University Hospital.
Kitty Cornett came to the Haslam College of Business’s Graduate and Executive Education (GEE) department as a program coordinator in 2006. She worked with GEE’s Operations Excellence Executive programs, and was part of the team that established the lean transformation educational process for the U.S. Air Force. In 2013, Kitty was promoted to Assistant Director focusing on Healthcare Business Solutions and in 2014, moved to Aerospace and Defense programs, where she managed the University’s U.S. Air Force contract and was responsible for authoring research and teaching proposals in response to government contracting opportunities. Currently, Kitty is a recruiter for GEE’s Executive MBA programs. She spent 3 years at Duke University as the Administrative Director of the Duke Primate Center. She is a UT alumni, with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Masters of Public Administration.
Dr. Andrew Althouse is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. He works for the Center for Research on Health Care Data Center and Center for Clinical Trials and Data Coordination. As a biostatistician, he has worked across many specialties including cardiology, nephrology, primary care, palliative care, diabetes, and gynecology. He is interested in the design, conduct, and analysis of randomized controlled trials. Further, he is the statistical reviewer of The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. He also is the vice chair of the American Heart Association Statistics Task Force. In his free time, Dr. Althouse enjoys participating in strength based activities such as powerlifting, weightlifting, and strongman. His heaviest lift was 600 pounds.
Dr. Althouse received his BS in Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University, MA in Applied Statistics at the University of Pittsburgh, and PhD in Epidemiology also at Pittsburgh. In 2014, he won the Best Dissertation Award, Omicron Chapter, at Pitt Public Health.
Lesley Stephen has been affected by metastatic breast cancer since 2014. Her cancer had metastasized to the brain, lungs, bone, and liver. In her fight against her cancer, she has participated in clinical trials, notably the Epertinib trial at Glasgow’s Beatson Cancer Centre. Following a positive experience there, she became an advocate for clinical trials over the existing standard treatments such as chemotherapy. She is also a trial nurse coordinator at Make 2nds Count, a charity that supports those with metastatic breast cancer. At the National Cancer Research Institute and International Cancer Genome Consortium, Stephen participates as a patient advocate. In her free time, Stephen enjoys art, baking, and spending time with her four children.
The Coders: These dedicated students have done the majority of the coding for simulations and the Statistical Plan. They were able to take chicken scratch on a white board from Allen and transform that to functioning simulations and analyses.
Alissa Gordon is an undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee studying statistics along with minors in biology, public health, and economics. She began working for Dr. Pannell in January 2021. She assists in writing the simulations to calculate sample sizes along with other tasks. She hopes to pursue a PhD in biostatistics following graduation to enter the world of academia and research.
Tyler Dykes is an undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee studying Business Analytics with a concentration in marketing. He assists in testing samples in the simulations as well as studying other research materials. Tyler hopes to continue his work in the world of analytics as he pursues a Masters of Science in Business Analytics.
Ian Sebby is an undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee studying Statistics with a double-major in Economics. He assists in writing the interim analysis simulation and developing rules for futility in the simulation. He hopes to gain further education in the field of statistics by pursuing a Masters in Biostatistics after graduation.