May 8, 2015

The Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost has announced that two Gillings School of Global Public Health faculty members will be awarded distinguished professorships, effective July 1, pending approval by the University’s Board of Trustees.

Dr. Jianwen Cai

Dr. Jianwen Cai

Dr. Mayer-Davis

Dr. Beth Mayer-Davis

Jianwen Cai, PhD, professor and vice chair of biostatistics, and Elizabeth Mayer-Davis, PhD, professor and chair of nutrition, have been designated as Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professors in their respective fields.

“We are thrilled and very appreciative that Provost Dean and his selection committee have chosen two distinguished professors from our School,” said Barbara K. Rimer, DrPH, dean and Alumni Distinguished Professor at the Gillings School. “I am so proud that each has contributed to improving health through distinguished scholarship. They’re also outstanding teachers and leaders at the University and within the School and their departments and disciplines.”

Cai earned a Master of Science (1989) and Doctor of Philosophy (1992), both in biostatistics, at the University of Washington at Seattle. She joined the Gillings School faculty in 1992.

She is widely recognized as one of the top experts on the analysis of multivariate, time-to-event data. Such analyses are fundamental to health research in a variety of domains. For example, her case-cohort expertise was used to elucidate how the relationship between mortality and body mass index (BMI) changes with age, and this discovery fundamentally altered how physicians advise patients about weight as they age.

She has published more than 160 peer-reviewed articles, resulting in nearly 10,000 citations. An honorary fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, she currently serves as president of the International Biometric Society – Eastern North Atlantic Region (ENAR), a major indicator of respect in her professional community.

During her more than 20 years at UNC, she has been successful at obtaining grants for her research. Currently, she is principal investigator for the Hispanic Community Health Study, the largest study ever conducted of Hispanic populations.

Mayer-Davis, an internationally known and respected expert on diabetes, earned a Master of Science in Public Health at the University of Colorado (1986) and doctorate in epidemiology from the University of California at Berkeley (1992). She joined the nutrition faculty in the UNC schools of public health and medicine in 2008.

Her early research concentrated on the risk factors for Type 2 diabetes in adults. For example, in 1998, she and colleagues demonstrated that moderately intense physical activity could improve insulin resistance, a key factor in reducing diabetes risk.

Mayer-Davis is particularly known for her work on childhood diabetes, especially among minority populations. She has published 240 peer-reviewed articles, producing more than 10,000 citations. Her work has been continually funded for more than 20 years with a significant series of grants.

She has held a number of prestigious positions, including an appointment by President Obama to the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion and Integrative and Public Health. She served as president of the American Diabetes Association and was on the ADA’s board of directors for eight years. For many years, she was a contributor to the ADA Standards of Medical Care and Nutrition Recommendations, which are used in the U.S. and many other countries.


Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: David Pesci, director of communications, (919) 962-2600 or dpesci@unc.edu.
RELATED PAGES
CONTACT INFORMATION
Visit our communications and marketing team page.
Contact sphcomm@unc.edu with any media inquiries or general questions.

Communications and Marketing Office
125 Rosenau Hall
CB #7400
135 Dauer Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7400