Deely, Doerge, and Liu Named ASA Fellows
05-01-2007
John J. Deely, Rebecca W. Doerge, and Chuanhai Liu have been named Fellows of the American Statistical Association (ASA), the nation's preeminent professional statistical society. The honor recognizes their outstanding professional contributions and leadership in the field of statistical science. They will be presented at a ceremony on July 31 during the 167th annual Joint Statistical Meetings in Salt Lake City, Utah, held July 29 - August 2, 2007.
"The ASA Fellows designation honors the extraordinary members of the statistics profession," said Mary Ellen Bock, ASA President and head of the Department of Statistics at Purdue University. "The collective outstanding contributions of this year's Fellows from academia, government and industry have invigorated the statistics discipline in education, research, administration and service."
Since 1914, members of the ASA annually nominate their peers as fellows. No more than one-third of one percent of the ASA members are elected each year. Deely, Doerge, and Liu join other notable statisticians who have been named as Fellows, including other current faculty from the Department of Statistics: Professors Virgil Anderson, Mary Ellen Bock, William S. Cleveland, George P. McCabe, and David S. Moore.
John J. Deely, Continuing Lecturer in Statistics, received his Ph.D. in Statistics in 1965 from Purdue University. After serving 28 years as Chair of Statistics at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, Dr. Deely returned to Purdue to teach in 1997. His research interests lie in the area of empirical Bayes and Bayesian methods, although his recent interests lie mainly in the fully Bayesian approach. Interacting with quantitative people in other disciplines including engineering, biological sciences, agriculture, and business is an enjoyable aspect of his work. He is also active in the areas of statistical decision theory, data analysis, and sample surveys with particular interest in appropriate and efficient use of prior information in these areas. Not only is Dr. Deely a Bayesian specialist, but he's also a specialist in statistics education. He has a passion for making statistical theory accessible to the practioner. He teaches the Department's largest course, STAT 113, Statistics and Society, which teaches statistical concepts to students without a strong mathematical background. Dr. Deely also teaches STAT 529K, Bayesian Applied Decision Theory.
Rebecca W. Doerge, Professor of Statistics and Agronomy, received her Ph.D. in Statistics from North Carolina State University in 1993. She joined the Department of Statistics in 1995 after a two year postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University. Dr. Doerge has played an integral role in the establishment of Genomics at Purdue University, and as director of the Statistical Bioinformatics Center at Purdue, she continues to forge new ground in the exciting areas of statistical genomics, quantitative genetics, and bioinformatics. Although her formal training is in Mathematics and Statistics, her research lies on the interdisciplinary boundaries of many fields (Animal Science, Biology, Biochemistry, Botany, Chemistry, Computer Science, Horticulture, Genetics, Genomics, Plant Breeding, etc.) that are currently involved in assessing genomic based questions. Statistical genomics, also referred to as Statistical Bioinformatics, a component of bioinformatics, brings together all of these scientific disciplines into one arena to ask, answer, and disseminate biologically interesting questions and information in the quest to understand the ultimate function of DNA and epigenomic associations for each and every genome. Currently, Dr. Doerge's research program encompasses four broad areas: development of statistical methodology for genetic mapping and quantitative trait loci (QTL) location; applying up to date genetic mapping and (e-)QTL methodology to real experimental data; assessing genetic variation and diversity of populations and germplasm collections; and understanding and analyzing gene expression, protein expression, and epigenomic data for the purpose of statistically designing and then testing (epi-)genomic/biologically based questions. Dr. Doerge has won numerous awards for both teaching and research including: Purdue's Teaching for Tomorrow Award (1996); College of Science Outstanding Assistant Professor for Excellence in Teaching and Research (1997); Outstanding Teacher of Undergraduates in the School of Science (1998); University Scholar (2001); and the College of Science Graduate Student Mentoring Award (2007).
Chuanhai Liu, Professor of Statistics, joined the Department of Statistics in 2005. He received his Ph.D. in Statistics from Harvard University in 1994. Prior to coming to Purdue, he worked at Bell-Labs, Murray Hill, New Jersey as a member of their technical staff. His research interests include statistical modeling and computation, particularly Quasi-Newton algorithms, EM-type algorithms, and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. Dr. Liu received the Bell-Labs President's Silver Award in 1998, the Outstanding Statistical Application Paper (Journal of the American Statistical Association) in 2000, and the Frank Wilcoxon Prize for the best practical application paper in Technometrics in 2000. Since coming to Purdue, he has taught Computational Statistics, Statistical Analysis with Missing Data, and an Introduction to Statistics.