Eberly alumnus Jemar Bather receives Penn State Alumni Achievement Award
Eberly alumnus Jemar R. Bather has been selected as one of 11 recipients of the Penn State Alumni Association's 2024 Alumni Achievement Award. The Alumni Achievement Award recognizes alumni 35 years of age and younger for their extraordinary professional accomplishments, demonstrating to students that Penn State alumni can succeed in exceptional fashion at an early age.
Recipients are nominated by an academic college or campus and invited to return to Penn State to share their expertise with students and the University community.
The Penn State Alumni Association will honor the awardees at the 2024 Alumni Achievement Awards Ceremony at 6 p.m. EST on Friday, March 15. The ceremony will be held at the State Theatre in downtown State College and can be viewed everywhere by livestream.
Bather graduated from Penn State with a bachelor's degree in statistics in 2014.
Bather is part of a cross-functional team at Merck, where, in his role as a senior scientist, he works with physicians to develop new medications for individuals living with infectious diseases. He also provides biostatistical leadership, guidance, and support to advance the development of medications in Merck’s infectious disease portfolio. While a doctoral student at Harvard, he conducted novel studies in pediatric HIV, environmental health, and reproductive epidemiology.
Bather received the Albert Schweitzer Award from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health for his sustained commitment to health equity and justice, and his efforts to advance diversity and inclusion through teaching, mentoring, service, research, and advocacy. He has published 13 papers which have contributed to public health and clinical science. His work has appeared in diverse outlets such as the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, Statistics in Medicine, Environmental Research, Public Health Reports, Frontiers in Genetics, and the Journal of Biomedical Informatics. In addition to his position at Merck, he served as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the New York University School of Global Public Health, and as a faculty affiliate at the NYU Center for Anti-Racism, Social Justice, & Public Health.
As a student at Penn State, he received the Bunton-Waller Scholarship and held leadership positions in the Lambda Lambda Chapter of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was also a member of the Mu Sigma Rho Statistical Honor Society. Bather attended Penn State Greater Allegheny from 2009 to 2011 and Penn State World Campus in 2013.