Linda Williams Pickle, PhD, is renowned as a biostatistician with more than four decades of expertise in cancer research and public health modeling. She initially pursued an education at the Johns Hopkins University, earning a Bachelor of Arts in statistics in 1974 and a PhD in biostatistics in 1977. Dr. Pickle subsequently completed postgraduate coursework at the George Washington University during the 1986-1987 academic year.
From 1966 to 1969, Dr. Pickle began her career as a computer programmer for the Commercial Credit Computer Corporation of Baltimore. Additionally active as a systems analyst for the Greater Baltimore Medical Center from 1969 to 1972, she later worked as a graduate teaching assistant in biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins University from 1974 to 1977. Following her graduation from the aforementioned university, Dr. Pickle accepted a position as a biostatistician for the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, where she would remain until 1988.
Dr. Pickle further flourished with Georgetown University Medical School in a number of positions, including as an adjunct assistant professor of biostatistics and epidemiology from 1983 to 1988, an associate professor from 1988 to 1991 and the director of the biostatistics unit at the school’s V.T. Lombardi Cancer Research Center from 1988 to 1991. From 1991 to 1999, she found success with the National Center for Health Statistics as a statistician in the Office of Research Methodology. Furthermore, Dr. Pickle served as a senior mathematical statistician in the Division of Population Sciences for the National Cancer Institute with the National Institutes of Health from 1999 to 2007.
Since 2007, Dr. Pickle has excelled as the chief statistician at StatNet Consulting, LLC. She has also maintained her involvement on the adjunct faculty in public health and geography at the Pennsylvania State University since 2008. Having contributed extensively to professional journals throughout her career, she is also noted as the author of atlases showing the geographic patterns of U.S. mortality, including deaths due to cancer and all leading causes of death. Design of the 1997 atlas was based on her research into how people interpret data maps, work that led to co-authorship of a textbook “Visualizing Data Patterns with Micromaps” with Dr. Daniel B. Carr in 2010. Moreover, her work was instrumental in the development of a mathematical model used by the American Cancer Society to predict cancer diagnoses across populations. The recipient of numerous national awards, Dr. Pickle has been recognized as a fellow of the American Statistical Association and is a member of the Biometric Society.