Perelman Professorship of Biostatistics

In 2011, Ray and Ruth Perelman made a historic gift to permanently endow Penn’s medical school, which was renamed the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. From the endowment funds, Perelman Professorships were created to recognize faculty members who are making a transformative impact on academic medicine. Perelman Professorships are awarded to both current Penn professors and new faculty recruited from around the world.  

The Perelmans’ endowment of the medical school followed the couple’s earlier naming gift for the Ruth and Raymond Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine, Penn Medicine’s state-of-the-art outpatient center. Through their philanthropy, the Perelmans became crucial partners in making Penn Medicine one of the most influential and innovative academic medical centers in the U.S. 

Raymond G. Perelman (1917–2019) was the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of RGP Holdings, a private holding company comprising an array of manufacturing, mining, and financial interests. He and Ruth Caplan Perelman (1921– 2011) were married for 70 years. The Perelmans were counted among Philadelphia’s most prominent and generous philanthropists. They made pathbreaking gifts to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and its adjacent Perelman Building, the Kimmel Center and Perelman Theater, the Perelman Jewish Day School, and many other Jewish cultural and welfare organizations. Both the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Drexel University have honored Ray’s extraordinary support by naming areas of their campuses in his honor.    

At Penn, Mr. Perelman became a powerful advocate for all of Penn Medicine’s missions. In his later years, he could often be seen on campus or at medical school events such as graduation and the celebration of the Perelman School of Medicine’s 250th year. He particularly enjoyed meeting Penn’s incoming medical students. 

A Wharton alumnus and recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Penn, he served as a Penn Medicine Trustee from 2002 to 2012. In 2011, he was awarded Penn’s Medal for Distinguished Achievement, one of the University’s highest honors, to recognize “his untiring efforts and immeasurable contributions to the health and well-being, education and cultural opportunities in Philadelphia and beyond.” 

Current Chairholder
Hongzhe Li, PhD

Hongzhe Li, PhD is Perelman Professor of Biostatistics Epidemiology and Informatics at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. He is also Vice Chair of Research Integration, Director of the Center for Statistics in Big Data, and former Chair of the Graduate Program in Biostatistics at Penn. He is also a Professor of Statistics and Data Science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  

Dr. Li has been elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA), a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dr. Li served on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Cancer Institute of the NIH and regularly serves on various NIH study sections. He served as Chair of the Section on Statistics in Genomics and Genetics of the ASA, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Statistics in Biosciences, Associate Editor of Journal of the American Statistical Association, Biometrics and other publications. Dr. Li’s awards include the ASA Philadelphia Chapter Award in Research Excellence in 2022, the International Chinese Statistical Association (ICSA) Outstanding Service Award in 2020, and the Jane M. Glick Graduate Student Teaching Award in 2014.  

Dr. Li’s research focuses on developing statistical and machine learning methods for integrative analysis of large-scale genetics, genomics, and metagenomics data and theory on high-dimensional statistics and modern machine learning. He has been collaborating closely with investigators at Penn Medicine on understanding the host-microbiome interactions in disease onset and progression; the genetics, epigenetics and proteomics of kidney disease; and single cell genomics of inflammatory bowel disease. He has over 260 published papers, including papers in Science, Nature, Nature Genetics, Nature Methods, Nature Microbiology, Science Translational Medicine, and Cell Host & Microbe. His work has also appeared in leading statistical journals including Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Biometrika, Biometrics, and Annals of Applied Statistics. He has trained over 50 PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, many of whom hold faculty positions at leading U.S. universities.