The 2026 Award for Statistical Excellence in the Pharmaceutical Industry has been awarded to the Neuroscience Digital Twin Innovation Team at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. The team was recognised for innovative applications of digital twin methodologies across neuroscience clinical development, supporting more informed clinical trial design and decision-making.
The
award is presented by the RSS in partnership with
Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry (PSI) and announced at the PSI annual conference, which took place in Belfast this month.
The winning entry (Yushuf Sharker, Meizi Liu, Max Tolkoff, and Danielle Sullivan, Takeda Pharmaceuticals) demonstrated the innovative application of digital twin methodologies across neuroscience clinical development. The team developed patient-level counterfactual models that enabled researchers to explore expected disease progression, assess endpoint sensitivity, and evaluate assumptions underlying eligibility criteria and sample size planning before commitments were made to larger or longer trials.
Applied across multiple clinical programmes, including neurodegenerative diseases and rare dementias, the approach provided a practical decision support tool for trial design and development planning whilst preserving the role of randomised evidence and established statistical principles. The judges praised the work for its potential to improve clinical development decisions, particularly in settings where patient populations are small or highly heterogeneous
Naomi Givens, Chair of PSI, said: "The judges were impressed by the innovative application of digital twin methodologies to support clinical development in neuroscience. This work demonstrates how advanced statistical methods can be translated into practical tools that improve decision-making and clinical trial design, making it a worthy winner of this year's award."
RSS CEO Sarah Cumbers said: “This year’s winning entry perfectly demonstrates how modern data science can solve some of our most stubborn clinical challenges. By using digital twin methods to tackle the complexities of rare disease research, the Takeda team has shown how advanced analytics can directly improve trial design and decision-making. We are delighted to partner with PSI to celebrate this outstanding contribution, which promises to make a real difference for patient populations where data is hardest to gather."