PhilaSUG Executive Committee PhilaSUG Executive Committee


The Executive Committee meets on an occasional basis, usually between three and six times per year. We invite you to apply to be a member. It's a fun and effective way to broaden your SAS horizons. Contact any member below for more details.


[picture of Jonas V. Bilenas]
Jonas V. Bilenas
Jonas V. Bilenas
Jonas Bilenas has been using SAS since 1986 in the credit card industry. He has worked in risk management and marketing acquisitions. His use of SAS has been in the areas of model development, reporting, design of experiments, simulation, and optimization. He has authored the SAS Press text, The Power of PROC FORMAT, and has presented at many international, regional, and local SAS user groups.


Max Cherny Photo Max Cherny
Max Cherny has been using SAS in the Pharmaceutical Industry since 1995. He has presented papers at PharmaSUG, NESUG and at local SAS user groups. He holds Bachelor's degree from Temple University in Biology and Master's degree from Lasalle University in Computer Science. Max works at GlaxoSmithKline.
GlaxoSmithKline

Barry Cohen Barry Cohen, President Emeritus
Barry Cohen is an application developer with 15+ years experience in the pharmaceutical clinical trials industry. Barry is presently the CDISC Governance team lead focused on developing the governance process and participant roles for a simple first use case, adding a new term to an existing code list and the accompanying basic administrative and participant roles defined. This use case is near completion and the team will move to apply the principles to the more complex case of adding a scientific concept to a domain and the development of a new domain soon. Barry is a co-founder and President emeritus of the Philadelphia SAS User Group. He is also one of the founding members of the Delaware Valley CDISC User Network.
CDISC

John Cohen (r) John Cohen

In loving memory of John, he will be missed dearly.

It is with profound sadness that we pass along some news that the PhilaSUG EC learned a few days ago. Our friend, John Cohen, of Newark DE, passed away on November 1, 2018 while bicycling.


John Cohen was a SAS user since 1980, and he was active in several SAS user communities.
R.I.P.

[Picture of Michael Davis] Michael Davis, President,
Michael Davis is a Financial Analyst IV at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. Previously he was at Optum Inc., Independence Blue Cross, Health Market Science (now part of LexisNexis ), Aetna, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Connecticut (now part of Anthem), the Connecticut Hospital Association, Veterans Sourcing Group (JP Morgan Chase) and was an independent consultant. Michael has been a SAS user since 1985 and previously specialized in developing decision support systems, web-enabled applications, and data warehousing ETL systems. He has frequently presented papers at SUGI/SGF, NESUG, and local SAS user groups. Michael holds a Masters in Health Administration from Duke University.
Horizon BCBSNJ logo

[Picture of Diane_Foose] Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Diane Foose,
Diane Foose is a Programming Contractor in the Pharmaceutical industry. Previously she has worked for Novartis, GSK and Wyeth (now Pfizer). She has been using SAS since 1989 and in the Pharmaceutical Industry since 1982. She holds an ABA & BBA in Computer Science from Ursinus College.


Picture of David Horvath David Horvath,
David is an IT Professional who has worked with SAS, off and on, since the late 1980's using it as a data processing (4GL/ETL) and analysis tool. He has presented at PhilaSUG, other user groups, and organizations (workshops and seminars) in Australia, France, the US, and Canada. His Masters is in Organizational Dynamics from UPENN, has consulted with CHERP at the VA hospital, and currently works in Risk Analytics Infrastructure in Wilmington DE. He has several books to his credit (none SAS-related) and is an Adjunct Instructor covering IT topics.

Mark Heintz Mark Keintz
Mark's primary SAS interests are in financial research applications and effective use of large data sets. Mark has been using SAS since it was documented in one book. He currently is a consultant to Wharton Research Data Services and to Stakana Analytics.

George Laskaris George Laskaris, Membership Chairman, and SAS Institute Liaison
George is Head of Data Sciences at Syntactx who has over 30 years of experience working with medical doctors, scientists, statisticians, data managers and programmers to develop applications, train personnel and lead departments within pharmaceutical and contract research organizations.

His goal continues to be to lead by example to better understand the science, improve on my techniques and deliver on behalf of my company and/or clients.

George's specialties include managing new/startup departments including building data management, programming departments and creating the processes, working practices for engaging strategic partners in pharmaceutical and contract research organizations. Clinical expertise including developing systems, utilities, tools to help produce regulatory documents. Clinical life cycle expertise including authoring standard operating procedures for data management and stats and programming.

Syntactx

Randy Noga Randall J. Noga, President Emeritus
Randy Noga is a Project Manager at Member Support Services (MSS) in Cranbury NJ; a shared services organization for three credit unions; Aspire Federal Credit Union, Credit Union of New Jersey, & United Teletech Financial Credit Union. Randy holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Villanova University, and has extensive experience managing information technology development efforts, computing infrastructure management, and program management office initiatives. Prior to joining MSS, Randy has worked for Automated Financial Systems (AFS), Merrill Lynch, Student Finance Group, General Motors, Law School Administration Council, MBNA, PHH Corporation, and Honeywell. Randy is President Emeritus of the Philadelphia SAS User Group.
Member Support Services

Amos Odeleye Amos Odeleye, Treasurer,
Amos graduated with B.S. in Statistics (University of Ibadan, NIGERIA), M.S. in Statistics (West Chester University, Pennsylvania) and M.A. in Economics (Temple University, Pennsylvania - 2016). More than 15 years experience as a Statistician, Financial Analyst, SAS programmer and as a consultant. Current employment - Assistant Vice President, Corporate Finance (TD Bank Financial Group) and Adjunct Professor, College of Business & Leadership, Eastern University, St. Davids, Pennsylvania. Recent past employment - Senior Statistician/Economist - AmeriHealth Caritas ( a subsidiary of BlueCross BlueShield).
TD Bank

[picture of Steve Rhoades]

Steve Rhoades,
Steve Rhoades is a IT professional experienced in application development and support in a multi platform environments including IBM Z/OS, UNIX HP/AIX, M/S Server, NT, HP Blades and PC. He was the SAS Subject Matter Expert at his previous company, providing Help Desk SAS assistance and second level support for production, many of those functions are required at his current company as well. Additionally Steve has written a number of courses, SOPs and How-To Documents as well as being a department liaison for hardware, software and network needs which included space management, backups, acquisition and licensing issues and have been SAS Administrator. Since 2000 he has written 8 NESUG papers.

[picture of Robert Schechter] retired


Robert Schechter, Webmaster and Newsletter Editor
Robert Schechter, recently retired from being a Senior Statistical Programmer at inVentiv Health Clinical, LLC, has had over forty years of experience in data processing and has been working with SAS since 1972, both as a programmer and a teacher. He currently serves as Webmaster and Newsletter Editor for PhilaSUG, and he is a member of the group's executive committee.

Habin Shu Haibin Shu,
Haibin Shu is an experienced Clinical Data Professional, SAS User for over 19 years, and Statistician by training. He started AccuClin Global Services LLC to provide services in DM, Programming, and Biostatistics. He is passionate about being a convincing story teller from rigorous data work.
AccuClin Global

[picture of Kajal Tahilani] Kajal Tahiliani,
Kajal Tahiliani works as a Programming Manager at GSK and has over 13 years of experience in SAS Programming including over 8 years in the CRO industry. Her expertise includes project leadership and programming support for multiple studies, project staff resourcing based on project budgets and timelines. She is responsible for expansion and development of her team. Kajal represents Statistical Programming at Project Audits and Client Bid meetings. She is highly experienced with working on submissions like ISS, ISE, SMC, NDA and BLA and is well versed with CDISC standards including SDTM and ADAM.

Kajal is Base and Advance SAS certified and holds a MS Degree in Biomedical Engineering from University of Texas at Arlington. Prior to her position at GSK, she has worked at Cytel, PRA Health Sciences, ICON, Merck & Co., Genzyme and Johnson & Johnson. Kajal has presented at several conferences like SAS Global Forum, NESUG and PhilaSUG.

GlaxoSmithKline


Executive Committee Documents


[PhilaSUG Logo]
[HOME]
This site was last mod: June 2, 2020. Comments and suggestions are always appreciated, email the WebMaster at webmaster@PhilaSUG.org
[PhilaSUG Logo]
[About]