Leanne Dyal
Leanne Dyal, a manager in the statistics department at PHRI since 2014, was among the recipients of the McMaster University President’s Awards for Outstanding Service, 2020.
During the pandemic, Leanne helped ensure that PHRI staff was able to complete remote work effectively. She was also been directly involved in the rapid initiation of two COVID-19-related randomized controlled trials.
Leanne was a cherished member of the PHRI family for more than 15 years. In the statistics department, she established greater procedural standardization for her team – an initiative that quickly expanded to become enterprise-wide systemic improvement.
“Leanne was an integral part of the growth and success of the stats team as well as PHRI as a whole,” says Statistics Director, Shrikant Bangdiwala, who promoted Leanne to Manager, Statistical Operations.
Leanne introduced the first co-op student to the statistics team, developed a standard report library, introduced new data analysis tools, and implemented continuous improvement of resourcing and study budgets, to list a few of her innovations.
In a recent large and complex project, she invented a method for documenting critical information, tracking study questions and organizing datasets using new standardized nomenclatures – all of which allowed the team to complete the project a month ahead of schedule.
Leanne was appreciated for her personal contributions at PHRI as well as her professional excellence. She served as chef for our pancake breakfasts and other (pre-pandemic) social events at work, and regularly volunteered to teach the principles of biostatistics, research study design and clinical research methodology within the Faculty of Health Sciences.
You are encouraged to leave Leanne a message of congratulations on the online “kudos board” set up by McMaster University.
