Amita Kalyanie Manatunga is a

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

n biostatistician who works as a professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics at the

Rollins School of Public Health The Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH) is the public health school of Emory University. Founded in 1990, Rollins has more than 1,100 students pursuing master's degrees ( MPH/MSPH) and over 150 students pursuing doctorate degrees (PhD). The ...

Emory University Emory University is a private university, private research university in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was founded in 1836 as Emory College by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory. Its main campu ...

, where she is also affiliated with the Winship Cancer Institute. Her research interests include

survival analysis Survival analysis is a branch of statistics for analyzing the expected duration of time until one event occurs, such as death in biological organisms and failure in mechanical systems. This topic is called reliability theory, reliability analysis ...

inter-rater reliability In statistics, inter-rater reliability (also called by various similar names, such as inter-rater agreement, inter-rater concordance, inter-observer reliability, inter-coder reliability, and so on) is the degree of agreement among independent obse ...

environmental epidemiology Environmental epidemiology is a branch of epidemiology concerned with determining how environmental exposures impact human health. This field seeks to understand how various external risk factors may predispose to or protect against disease, illnes ...

, and

medical imaging Medical imaging is the technique and process of imaging the interior of a body for clinical analysis and medical intervention, as well as visual representation of the function of some organs or tissues (physiology). Medical imaging seeks to revea ...

of the

kidney In humans, the kidneys are two reddish-brown bean-shaped blood-filtering organ (anatomy), organs that are a multilobar, multipapillary form of mammalian kidneys, usually without signs of external lobulation. They are located on the left and rig ...

Education and career

Manatunga graduated from the

University of Colombo The University of Colombo (informally Colombo University or UoC) is a Public University, public research university located primarily in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It is the oldest institution of modern higher education in Sri Lanka. Specialised in t ...

in Sri Lanka with first class honors in 1978. She has master's degrees in statistics from

Purdue University Purdue University is a Public university#United States, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded ...

(1984) and the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River in 1930. With approximately 30,000 full ...

(1986). She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Rochester in 1990. Her dissertation, ''Inference for Multivariate Survival Distributions Generated by Stable Frailties'', was supervised by David Oakes. After finishing her doctorate, she joined the faculty at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...

as an assistant professor, and moved in 1994 to Emory. At Emory, she is a long-term and frequent collaborator with two other women in biostatistics, Limin Peng and her former student Ying Guo.

Recognition

Manatunga was elected as a

Fellow of the American Statistical Association Like many other academic professional societies, the American Statistical Association (ASA) uses the title of Fellow of the American Statistical Association as its highest honorary grade of membership. The designation of ASA Fellow has been a sign ...

in 2004.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Manatunga, Amita Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American statisticians Sri Lankan scientists Sri Lankan women scientists Women statisticians Alumni of the University of Colombo Purdue University alumni University of Rochester alumni Indiana University faculty Emory University faculty