Susan Fera Assmann (June 26, 1956 – May 30, 2020) was an American mathematician and statistician. Her research in mathematics included work on the bin covering problem (a discrete optimization problem), while her later work in statistics and biostatistics included work on subgroup analysis and on the use of spironolactone for treating heart failure.
Early life, education, and career
Assmann is originally from Princeton, New Jersey, where she was born on June 26, 1956.[1] Her father, Frederick Fera Assmann (1915–2004) was a chemical engineer for the US Army and Thiokol Chemical Corporation;[1][2] her mother, Mary Assmann (died 2010), was a science teacher at The Pennington School.[3] In her doctoral dissertation, Susan Assmann writes that her interest in mathematics "was sparked by the 'interesting test' which constituted part of the application for entrance to the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics program", a summer program for high school mathematics students.[4]
After continuing in academia as a mathematics professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Regis College, Assmann came to work for the New England Research Institute (later known as HealthCore), where she continued as a principal statistician for nearly 26 years. Supporting the corresponding shift in her research interests, she received a master's degree in biostatistics from the School of Public Health & Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1994.[1][5]
Personal life
Assmann married Jeffrey Del Papa, a private equity manager. Her interests included change ringing and early harpsichord music.[1][5]
Assmann, S. F.; Peck, G. W.; Sysło, M. M.; Zak, J. (1981), "The bandwidth of caterpillars with hairs of length 1 and 2", SIAM Journal on Algebraic and Discrete Methods, 2 (4): 387–393, doi:10.1137/0602041, MR0634362
Assmann, Susan F.; Pocock, Stuart J.; Enos, Laura E.; Kasten, Linda E. (March 2000), "Subgroup analysis and other (mis)uses of baseline data in clinical trials", The Lancet, 355 (9209): 1064–1069, doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(00)02039-0, PMID10744093
Pitt, Bertram; Pfeffer, Marc A.; Assmann, Susan F.; Boineau, Robin; Anand, Inder S.; Claggett, Brian; Clausell, Nadine; Desai, Akshay S.; Diaz, Rafael; Fleg, Jerome L.; Gordeev, Ivan; Harty, Brian; Heitner, John F.; Kenwood, Christopher T.; Lewis, Eldrin F.; O'Meara, Eileen; Probstfield, Jeffrey L.; Shaburishvili, Tamaz; Shah, Sanjiv J.; Solomon, Scott D.; Sweitzer, Nancy K.; Yang, Song; McKinlay, Sonja M. (April 2014), "Spironolactone for heart failure with preserved ejection fraction", New England Journal of Medicine, 370 (15), Massachusetts Medical Society: 1383–1392, doi:10.1056/nejmoa1313731, PMID24716680
↑"Mary E. Assmann", The Times of Trenton, January 5, 2010, retrieved 2025-03-21
123Assmann, Susan Fera (1983), Problems in discrete applied mathematics (Ph.D. thesis), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hdl:1721.1/121905; see biographical note, p. 125
