Kathleen Joy Propert, a former professor of biostatics in the Perelman School of Medicine, died on January 23. She was 64.

Raised in Virgnia, Dr. Propert attended the Governor’s School for the Gifted at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia, where she made many lifelong friends. In 1976, she graduated from Manchester High School, and went on to receive her BS in applied biological sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982. She then earned an MS and an ScD in biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) in 1984 and 1989, respectively, writing a dissertation called Methods for Smoothing Longitudinal Data Using Locally Weighted Generalized Least Squares Regression.

After graduating from HSPH, Dr. Propert served on its faculty from 1991 to 1996. That year, she accepted a position as a professor clinician-educator of biostatistics and epidemiology in Penn’s School of Medicine and moved to Philadelphia. While at Penn, she published her research widely and worked on a prestigious 5-year NIH/NINDS grant to conduct preclinical trials to treat pediatric traumatic brain injury. Dr. Propert rose through the ranks at Penn, becoming a senior scholar at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, a member of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics (and director of its biostatistics core), and the director of biostatistics in the integrative health sciences facility core of the Center for Excellence in Environmental Toxicology.

In her free time, Dr. Propert enjoyed spending time with her cat, knitting, crocheting, stained glass, painting, and other types of art.

She is survived by her mother, Joyce Winstead; her brother, David; his wife, Amber; and their sons, Benjamin Ambrose Jamie and Rhys Llewellyn. Donations in honor of Dr. Propert may be sent to Richmond SPCA, 2519 Hermitage Rd., Richmond, VA 23220.