CANSSI is a collaborative effort between institutions, researchers and thought leaders. With a shared vision for developing statistical sciences, it’s the people who are the heart and soul of CANSSI.

Directorate

Directorate

The Directorate is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of CANSSI. Members of the Directorate oversee programs, develop new initiatives, and make funding recommendations for workshops requesting less than $20,000.

Members include:

Andrea Benedetti | Deputy Director

Andrea Benedetti

Deputy Director
McGill University
andrea.benedetti@mcgill.ca

Andrea Benedetti is an Associate Professor, jointly appointed in the departments of Medicine and Epidemiology, Biostatistics & Occupational Health at McGill University.

She is primarily interested in the statistical challenges related to individual patient data meta-analysis. Andrea is a CIHR-funded biostatistician, and an author on more than 150 peer-reviewed publications.

She co-directs the DEPRESSD Project. This group has collected data from across the globe and used it to provide evidence-based information on the diagnostic accuracy of commonly-used depression screening tools. Andrea is supported by a Chercheur Boursier award from the FRQS.

Wesley Burr | Associate Director, Smaller Institutions

Wesley Burr

Associate Director Representing Smaller Institutions
Trent University
wesleyburr@trentu.ca

Wesley Burr is is an Associate Professor of Statistics (and Chair of Department) in the Department of Mathematics at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.

Wesley received a BScEng in Mathematics and Engineering in 2005 from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and a PhD in Statistics in 2012 from the same institution, working under David J. Thomson. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Queen’s University from January to May 2013 and then held a Visiting Fellowship at Health Canada from June 2013 to March 2016.

His research focuses on problems at the intersection of time series analysis, spectrum estimation, and modelling, with current research focused on problems coming from environmental epidemiology. He is grateful for funding from both NSERC’s Discovery Grant program and federal agencies Health Canada, Agriculture and Agrifood Canada, and Natural Resources Canada.

Donald Estep | Director

Director
Simon Fraser University
donald_estep@sfu.ca

Donald Estep is the Director of CANSSI. He joined the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science as Canadian Research Chair in Computational Probability and Uncertainty Quantification at Simon Fraser University. He moved from the Department of Statistics at Colorado State University, where he was Department Chair, University Distinguished Professor and University Interdisciplinary Research Scholar.

His research interests include uncertainty quantification for complex physics models, stochastic inverse problems, adaptive computation, and modeling of multiscale systems. Working with his collaborators, he has developed a systematic approach to a posteriori error estimation for simulations of complex systems, efficient numerical methods for uncertainty quantification for physical models, and theory and solution of inverse problems for stochastic parameters in physical models.

His application interests include ecology, materials science, detection of black holes, modeling of fusion reaction, analysis of nuclear fuels, hurricane wave forecasting, flow in porous media, and electromagnetic scattering. His research has been supported by multiple government agencies and national laboratories.

Don has served on several scientific advisory panels for the U.S. National Science Foundation and Department of Energy and on the Sandia National Laboratories CISE External Review Board and has co-authored several reports. He has served as the (founding) Chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Uncertainty Quantification, (founding) Co-Editor in Chief of the SIAM/ASA Journal on Uncertainty Quantification, and as SIAM representative to the Governing Board of SAMSI.

His awards include Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Computational and Mathematical Methods in Sciences and Engineering (CMMSE) Prize, and the Chalmers Jubilee Professorship of Chalmers University of Technology.

Mohammad Jafari Jozani | Associate Director, Prairies

Mohammad Jafari Jozani

Associate Director Representing Prairies
University of Manitoba
M_Jafari_Jozani@umanitoba.ca

Mohammad Jafari Jozani is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Statistics and an adjunct professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.

His current research involves statistical learning problems with high dimensional aspects in biostatistics, engineering and sustainable energy; small area estimation as well as statistical inference with complex sampling designs using order statistics and rank information. The focal point of his research program is on developing new methodologies, models and computational tools to solve data driven problems in a variety of application domains.

He has applied his research in areas such as breast cancer studies, BMD analysis and osteoporosis, mercury contamination in fish bodies, and recently in the calibration problems to design simulators for training purposes in order to make surgeries safer.

Lisa J. Strug | Associate Director, Ontario

Lisa Strug

Associate Director Representing Ontario
University of Toronto
lisa.strug@utoronto.ca

Lisa J. Strug is a Senior Scientist at the Research Institute of The Hospital for Sick Children and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences and the Division of Biostatistics at the University of Toronto.

She is the Associate Director of The Centre for Applied Genomics, a federally funded Toronto-based genome centre and one of three centres contributing to a national platform providing genome sequencing and analysis services in Canada and Internationally.  Her research has focused on statistical genetics and genomics, on the foundations of statistics and on their intersection.

She is the associate editor and statistical genetics editor of npj Genomic Medicine and is the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Genome Data Sciences.

Denis Talbot, Associate Director, Quebec

Denis Talbot

Associate Director Representing Quebec
Université Laval
denis.talbot@fmed.ulaval.ca

Denis Talbot is a professor in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at Université Laval. He participated in the creation of the graduate programs in biostatistics there. He was elected as a regional representative for Quebec at the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) in 2021 for a two-year term and is also a member of the bilingualism committee and the membership committee of the SSC.

His research interests concern causal inference methods for the analysis of observational data. He is also doing collaborative work in various areas including psychosocial stressors at work, vaccine effectiveness, cardiovascular health, and cancer. His program of research has been supported by grants from NSERC, CIHR and by research-career awards from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé.

Lang Wu, Associate Director, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon

Lang Wu

Associate Director Representing Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon
University of British Columbia
lang@stat.ubc.ca

Lang Wu is a Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He holds a PhD in Statistics from the University of Washington in Seattle.

His research has focused on analysis of longitudinal data based on mixed effects models, joint modelling longitudinal and survival data, missing data and measurement errors, and order-restricted hypothesis testing. He has applied his research in HIV/AIDS studies, cancer studies, and other health-related areas.

Yildiz Yilmaz | Associate Director, Atlantic Canada

Yildiz Yilmaz

Associate Director Representing Atlantic Canada
Memorial University of Newfoundland
yyilmaz@mun.ca

Yildiz Yilmaz is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head, Statistics, in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. She joined the department in 2013 after completing her PhD at the University of Waterloo in 2009 and working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, between 2009 and 2013.

Her research interests are in the areas of statistical theory and methodology, and in statistical methods in biostatistics and statistical genetics. In particular, her work focuses on survival analysis, event history analysis, multivariate modeling and analysis, causal inference, incomplete data analysis and response-selective sampling. Her work has been motivated by important problems in biomedicine and genetics.

She currently has the following research programs within the field of statistics, genetic epidemiology and statistical genetics: (1) development and application of novel methods to model time-to-event phenotypes in genome-wide prognosis studies; (2) development and application of novel genetic association methods based on joint models and directional models of multiple phenotypes; (3) evaluation of designs and statistical methods under response-dependent sampling; and (4) development of methods to model multivariate survival times.

Board of Governors

Board of Governors

The Board of Governors is responsible for overseeing all of CANSSI’s activities. This includes approving the appointment of the Director and the Deputy Director, and advising on strategic planning and governance. Board members also participate on a number of sub-committees.

The Board meets four times a year. The voting members are representatives of the scientific and stakeholder communities. Elections for the Board take place at the Annual General Meeting.

Members include:

Shelley Bull

Shelley Bull

Member-at-large
Term ends: June 30, 2026

Shelley B. Bull is Senior Investigator in the Prosserman Centre for Population Health Research, Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health in Toronto and Professor of Biostatistics, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Her research interests focus on methodology development and collaborative applications in statistical genetics and in genetic and molecular epidemiology, including statistical methods for detection, localization and characterization of genetic effects in complex trait studies based on genotyping, sequencing and molecular data collected from unrelated individuals, nuclear families, and pedigrees. Her work aims to integrate and apply methods for study design and analysis that create solutions to analytic obstacles commonly faced by researchers.

Awards include The Anthony Miller Award for Excellence in Research in Public Health, Graduate Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Toronto; the International Genetic Epidemiology Leadership Award; and the Statistical Society of Canada Impact Award. Shelley has served on grant review panels for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, and the Terry Fox Institute, and is an Associate Editor of Statistics in Medicine. She is currently Co-director of the CANSSI STAGE Training Program in Statistical Genetics and Genetic Epidemiology supported by CANSSI Ontario.

Arthur Charpentier

Arthur Charpentier

Member-at-large
Term ends: June 30, 2025

Arthur Charpentier holds an MSc from ENSAE (National School in Statistics, in Paris, France) and a PhD in applied mathematics from KU Leuven (Belgium). After being professor in various institutions (mainly in France, ENSAI, ENSAE, École Polytechnique), he is now professor at UQAM, Montréal. He has published several books in actuarial science and insurance modeling, as well as research papers, and is on the editorial board of several actuarial journals.

Richard J. Cook

Richard J. Cook

Member-at-large
Term ends: June 30, 2025

Richard J. Cook is a Professor of Statistics in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo and holds cross-appointments at the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo and the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University.

From 2005 to 2019, he held a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Statistical Methods for Health Research, and he is now a Mathematics Faculty Research Chair.

He completed a BSc in Statistics at McMaster University, and a Master’s in Mathematics and a PhD in Statistics at the University of Waterloo.

His research interests include the analysis of life history data, the design and analysis of clinical and epidemiological studies, and statistical methods for incomplete data. Areas of collaboration in health research include autoimmune disease, transfusion medicine and public health research more broadly.

Josée Dupuis

Josée Dupuis

Member-at-large
Term ends: June 30, 2026

Josée Dupuis, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair, Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, in the School of Population and Global Health at McGill University in Montreal. She previously held faculty positions at Northwestern University and Boston University School of Public Health, and a senior statistical geneticist position at Genome Therapeutics Corporation, a small biotech company. Professor Dupuis has co-authored over 250 articles in the field of statistical genetics. She is involved in the Framingham Heart Study, collaborating on projects to identify genes influencing diabetes related traits and pulmonary function traits. She is an Associate Editor for the journal Biostatistics. Professor Dupuis is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and she is past-President of the International Genetic Epidemiology Society. She was honoured with the International Genetic Epidemiology Leadership Award for her substantial contributions to the field and her service to the Society, and she received the 2020 American Society of Human Genetics Mentorship Award.

Donald Estep

Don Estep

Director
Simon Fraser University
donald_estep@sfu.ca
Ex officio

Donald Estep is the Director of CANSSI. He joined the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science as Canadian Research Chair in Computational Probability and Uncertainty Quantification at Simon Fraser University. He moved from the Department of Statistics at Colorado State University, where he was Department Chair, University Distinguished Professor and University Interdisciplinary Research Scholar.

His research interests include uncertainty quantification for complex physics models, stochastic inverse problems, adaptive computation, and modeling of multiscale systems. Working with his collaborators, he has developed a systematic approach to a posteriori error estimation for simulations of complex systems, efficient numerical methods for uncertainty quantification for physical models, and theory and solution of inverse problems for stochastic parameters in physical models.

His application interests include ecology, materials science, detection of black holes, modeling of fusion reaction, analysis of nuclear fuels, hurricane wave forecasting, flow in porous media, and electromagnetic scattering. His research has been supported by multiple government agencies and national laboratories.

Don has served on several scientific advisory panels for the U.S. National Science Foundation and Department of Energy and on the Sandia National Laboratories CISE External Review Board and has co-authored several reports. He has served as the (founding) Chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Uncertainty Quantification, (founding) Co-Editor in Chief of the SIAM/ASA Journal on Uncertainty Quantification, and as SIAM representative to the Governing Board of SAMSI.

His awards include Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Computational and Mathematical Methods in Sciences and Engineering (CMMSE) Prize, and the Chalmers Jubilee Professorship of Chalmers University of Technology.

Tim Hesterberg

Tim Hesterberg

Member-at-large
Term ends: June 30, 2026

Tim Hesterberg is a Staff Data Scientist at Instacart. Previously he worked as a Senior Data Scientist at Google and at Insightful (S-PLUS), Franklin & Marshall College, and Pacific Gas & Electric Co.  He received his Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford University, under Brad Efron, and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

He is author of the “Resample” package for R, Chihara and Hesterberg “Mathematical Statistics with Resampling and R” (2022), and “What Teachers Should Know about the Bootstrap: Resampling in the Undergraduate Statistics Curriculum”, The American Statistician 2015.

Shili Lin

Shili Lin

Member-at-large
Term ends: June 30, 2026

Shili Lin is Professor of Statistics at the Ohio State University (OSU) and the Co-Director of the Computational Health and Life Sciences Community of Practice in the Translational Data Analytics Institute at OSU. Her research interests include the development of statistical methods for genetic association studies, genetic epidemiology, cancer genomics and epigenomics, metagenomics, and bioinformatics.

In addition to methodological work, she has collaborated with domain-area researchers to study a number of complex diseases including cancer, multiple sclerosis, and poodle epilepsy.

Shili has served the statistical profession in various capacities. While serving as the 2018 Caucus for Women in Statistics (CWS) President, she worked with the American Statistical Association (ASA) to establish the annual Florence Nightingale Day, an event to encourage high school students to pursue educational and career opportunities in statistics and data science.

She has also served on the editorial boards of a number of journals, including as current Associate Editor (AE) of Biometrics and former AE of the Journal of the American Statistical Association. She has been a standing member in NIH Study Sections including Biostatistical Methods and Research Design. She is an elected member of the International Statistics Institute, a Fellow of the ASA, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Lisa Lix

Lisa Lix

Member-at-large
Term ends: June 30, 2025

Lisa Lix is professor and associate head of community health sciences at the University of Manitoba.

Lisa is an internationally recognized expert in the development and application of statistical models to improve chronic disease research and surveillance using population-based electronic health data.

Her research has advanced scientific knowledge about bias in disease diagnoses, methods to improve validity of chronic disease case ascertainment methods, and chronic disease risk prediction.

Her research has contributed to the scientific rigour of the Canadian Chronic Disease Surveillance System (CCDSS) developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada; she currently serves as co-chair of the Data Quality working Group for the CCDSS and was formerly co-chair of the Scientific Committee.

As director of the data science platform in the George & Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation, she oversees skilled biostatisticians, bioinformaticians, analysts, and database developers who link and analyze clinical, administrative, and biological databases to strategically enhance the provincial and national environments for patient-focused research using electronic health data.

She also leads nationally funded training initiatives on big data analytics and artificial intelligence in public/population health.

Lisa has served the Statistical Society of Canada since 2005 in various capacities and was president of the biostatistics section in 2010. She served as program chair for the Health Policy Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association in 2020.

She has published more than 400 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.

Joel Martin

Joel Martin

Member-at-large
Term ends: June 30, 2025

Joel Martin is the National Research Council Canada (NRC)’s Chief Digital Research Officer and Chief Science Officer. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, from the Georgia Institute of Technology and completed postdoctoral studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Joel has received awards for exceptional leadership and for innovative approaches to technology transfer. He has published dozens of peer-reviewed research articles and taught Computer Science courses at both the University of Ottawa and Carleton University.

Since joining the NRC in 1994, he has been a researcher and served in multiple leadership roles in the Digital Technologies Research Centre, including Acting Director General, Senior Director, Director of Research and Development, Program Lead of the Multimedia Analytic Tools for Security program, Team Leader, and project lead.

His strategic leadership has resulted in an increase in the impact of digital technology research at the NRC and beyond, including advances and applications in data science and analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, machine translation, computer vision and graphics, cybersecurity, human-computer interfaces, natural language processing, medical and bioinformatics, and the Internet of Things (IoT). For example, under his leadership, the Research Centre has been successful in introducing digital technologies to detect disease outbreaks, some of which are now used worldwide, and digital technologies that promote Indigenous languages in Canada. In addition, Joel has established research and development programs drawing interest and collaboration from universities and other government departments. These initiatives include the NRC’s Data Analytics Centre, the Multimedia Analytic Tools for Security program, and the AI for Design Challenge program. They have increased both scientific output and impact of the NRC’s Digital Technologies Research Centre to Canada and Canadians.

Farouk Nathoo

Farouk Nathoo

Member-at-large
Term ends: June 30, 2024

Farouk Nathoo received his PhD in statistics at Simon Fraser University in 2006 under the supervision of Charmaine Dean. He joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Victoria in 2006, and is now an Associate Professor and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Biostatistics for Spatial and High-Dimensional data.

His research interests focus on Bayesian Methods, High-dimensional Data, Statistical Computation, Neuroimaging Statistics, and Machine Learning.

Farouk is currently co-leader of the CANSSI Collaborative Research Team: “Joint Analysis of Neuroimaging Data: High-dimensional Problems, Spatio-Temporal Models and Computation”, a statistical science team with three sites (UVic, UAlberta, Guelph/McMaster) focused on the development of new methods for the joint analysis of neuroimaging and genetic data.

Farouk is currently serving as a member of the NSERC Mathematics and Statistics Evaluation Group (EG 1508, 2016-2019) and is also currently serving on the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Statistics.

Some of Farouk’s past positions include:

  • Member of the Organizing Committee for The Seventh International Workshop on the Perspectives on High-Dimensional Data Analysis, CMAT, Guanajuato, Mexico, June 2017
  • Member of the Local Organizing Committee, Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) Annual Meeting, Vancouver, British Columbia, June 2017
  • Member of the Organizing Committee, The Sixth International Workshop on the Perspectives on High-Dimensional Data Analysis, Fields Institute, May 2016
  • Member of the Organizing Committee for the BIRS Workshop on Mathematical and Statistical Challenges in Neuroimaging Data Analysis, January 2016
  • Program Co-Chair, for the Workshop on Applied Topology and High-Dimensional Data Analysis, University of Victoria, August 2015
  • Member of the Organizing Committee for the International Workshop on the Perspectives on High-dimensional Data Analysis III, Vancouver, May 2013
  • and Program Co-Chair, for GEOMED 2011 a GeoMedical Systems and Spatial Statistics International Conference, Victoria, October 2011.

Sastry Pantula

Sastry Pantula

Member-at-large
Term ends: June 30, 2024

Sastry G. Pantula, Dean of the College of Natural Sciences at California State University- San Bernardino, is nationally and internationally recognized as a leader in statistical sciences. Most recently, he has served as the Director of Data Analytics programs at Oregon State University (OSU).

He has also served as the Dean of the College of Science for four years at OSU from August 2013 to August 2017, after serving a three-year term as the Director for the Division of Mathematical Sciences at the National Science Foundation.

Sastry spent more than 30 years as a statistics professor at North Carolina State University (NCSU), where he began his academic career in 1982. At NCSU, he also served as the Director of Graduate Programs (1994-2002) and the Head of the Department of Statistics (2002-2010).

He has been a leader in graduate education, developing partnerships with industry, including GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Merck and SAS to increase graduate traineeships and fellowships.

In all of his administrative roles, he has focused on enhancing the quality, quantity and diversity within the department, the division and the college. His core values are excellence, diversity and harmony: strive for excellence, enhance diversity and foster harmony.

Sastry is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Statistical Association (ASA). He served as ASA president in 2010 and received the ASA Founders Award in 2014.

Eric Rancourt

Eric Rancourt

Chair of the Board of Directors
Term ends: June 30, 2024

Eric Rancourt is Director General of the Modern Statistical Methods and Data Science Branch at Statistics Canada. During his 30 years at Statistics Canada he has occupied several roles such as:

  • Director General of Strategic Data Management
  • Director of International Cooperation
  • Director of Corporate Planning
  • Head of research
  • Production manager of Survey Methodology Journal
  • and researcher.

His main areas of work have been on building scientific processes and measurement frameworks, treatment of nonresponse, estimation, gathering, safeguarding and use of administrative and alternate data in statistical programs.

He has been involved in many professional associations and has been an International Statistical Institute elected member for 16 years.

Louis-Paul Rivest

Louis-Paul Rivest

Member-at-large
Term ends: June 30, 2025

Louis-Paul Rivest has been a professor of statistics at Laval University for forty years. He has held several positions at the Statistical Society of Canada, such as Chair of the Survey Methods Group (1998), President of the Society (2000) and Chair of the Research Committee (2010–2015). He currently holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Statistical Sampling and Data Analysis at Laval University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has been very involved with CANSSI; for example, he co-led a collaborative research team on copulas (2014–2017).

Xuebin Zhang

Xuebin Zhang

Member-at-large
Term ends: June 30, 2024

Xuebin Zhang is a Senior Research Scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. His main research interest is in the past and future changes in the climate and the causes of climate change. Another of his interests is in the application of statistical analysis in climate research.

He serves as a convening lead author for the Working Group I contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report, and was a lead author of previous IPCC assessment reports.

He is a co-chair of the World Climate Research Program Grand Challenge on Weather and Climate Extremes. He also serves as a chair of the steering committee for International Meetings on Statistical Climatology.

Scientific Advisory Committee

Scientific Advisory Committee

This committee adjudicates competitions for Collaborative Research Team projects, major workshops and conferences, and makes funding recommendations to the Board. 

Chaired by the Director of CANSSI, this committee consists of nine prominent statistical scientists, typically from outside Canada. The Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS), Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences (Fields), and the Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM) are each entitled to nominate a member.

Members include:

Scarlett Bellamy

Scarlett Bellamy

Term ends: December 2024

I am a Professor of Biostatistics and Director of the Graduate Programs in Biostatistics, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Drexel University. I also serve as the Associate Dean of Diversity and Inclusion at Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health. Prior to my current position at Drexel, I was a Professor of Biostatistics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. I am also Co-Director of the Biostatistics and Informatics Core (BIC) and serve as a senior biostatistician for the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP) at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center. My research interests are in the design, analysis and implementation of cohort and longitudinal studies, particularly group/cluster randomized trials. I have published in a number of clinical and public health disciplines including: statistical methods; behavioral economics; HIV risk reduction; clinical investigations of HIV, cancer, cardiovascular health, obesity and physical activity, adult lung injury and lung transplantation; and critical care. Additionally, I have served as Director or Co-Director of Data Coordinating Centers for several large, multisite trials as well as served as a member of numerous Data Safety and Monitoring Committees, including service as Chair. I have been an active member of the Eastern North American Region (ENAR) of the International Biometric Society in several capacities including President (2017), past Co-Chair of the Fostering Diversity in Biostatistics Workshop on numerous occasions, and I was the PI of an R13 grant supporting this effort in the past. I am also an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association (2016) and was appointed to serve as the current Vice President of the American Statistical Association and am serving in my final year as a member of the Biostatistical Methods Research and Design (BMRD) study section for NIH.

Jay Breidt

Jay Breidt

Term ends: December 2025

Jay Breidt is a Senior Fellow in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at NORC at the University of Chicago. He is also Professor Emeritus and past Chair of the Department of Statistics at Colorado State University. His expertise is mathematical statistics, with interests that include survey sampling, time series, nonparametric regression, and uncertainty quantification for complex scientific models.

Breidt received his PhD at Colorado State University in 1991 and spent the first nine years of his career at Iowa State University as an assistant professor and tenured associate professor, before returning to Colorado State in 2000.

Breidt has an extensive record of refereed publications. He has presented over 130 invited short courses, conference talks, and academic seminars. Breidt has been an associate editor for seven different journals and Reviews Editor for the Journal of the American Statistical Association and The American Statistician. He has served on six review committees for the National Academy of Sciences. He is past Chair of the American Statistical Association National Committee on Energy Statistics (an advisory panel for the Energy Information Administration, US Department of Energy), has served two terms on the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, and currently chairs the Census Scientific Advisory Committee for the US Census Bureau.

Breidt has received numerous honors, including recognition with a national prize in environmental statistics, elected membership in the International Statistical Institute, and elected fellowship in both the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

Corina Constantinescu

Corina Constantinescu

Term ends: December 2023

Corina Constantinescu is Professor of Mathematics and Director of the Institute for Financial and Actuarial Mathematics, in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, at the University of Liverpool. Prior to being an academic, Corina worked as an actuary and led the life insurance department of one of the first private Romanian insurance companies. Given her practical perspective, many of her papers are published in actuarial journals. She also publishes in applied probability journals.

She serves as associate editor in a number of actuarial journals and is part of the publicity team of Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability.  Since 2013, together with Professor Severine Arnold of HEC Lausanne, they have been organizing the PARTY conferences for young researchers (unil.ch/party). Since 2018, she regularly teaches and supervises Masters students from the African Institute of Mathematical Science (AIMS) network.

Her expertise is in analytical methods for deriving exact or asymptotic results for ruin probabilities, with light or heavy-tailed assumptions in complex insurance risk models. Some of her more recent research interests are around fair insurance pricing when gender is not considered a factor, as well as financial inclusion, specifically fair pricing and regulation of microfinance and microinsurance practices.

Peter Craigmile

Peter Craigmile

Term ends: December 2025

Peter Craigmile is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Hunter College, The City University of New York (CUNY). He also serves as an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Glasgow, Scotland. He was previously a Professor in the Department of Statistics at The Ohio State University.

His research interests include time series analysis, spatial statistics, space-time modeling, and longitudinal methods. He is interested in the use of spectral and wavelet methods to investigate dependency structures and to analyze periodicities and trends. One application of this is to the study of long memory processes. In collaboration with others, he has developed methods for spatial exceedances and extremes, which are critical to assessing spatially varying risk of environmental change or disease. He enjoys application-oriented research in areas such as Biology, Climatology, Environmental Sciences, Public Health, and Psychology.

Professor Craigmile is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and The Royal Statistical Society.

Aurore Delaigle

Aurore Delaigle

Term ends: December 2024

Aurore Delaigle is a Professor and ARC Future Fellow at The University of Melbourne. Before moving to Melbourne in 2007, she held positions at the University of of California at Davis and at San Diego, and at the University of Bristol.

Aurore’s main research interests include nonparametric estimation, measurement errors, deconvolution problems and functional data analysis. She is particularly interested in developing new methods for indirectly and imperfectly observed data, especially if they have some seemingly unappealing form (e.g., incomplete, irregular, non-stationary, too big to handle with usual methods).

In 2013, Aurore was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) and was awarded the Moran Medal from the Australian Academy of Science.

In 2018 she became a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and in 2020 she was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Josée Dupuis

Josée Dupuis

Term ends: December 2023

Josée Dupuis, Ph.D., is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University. She previously held a faculty position at Northwestern University, worked as a senior statistical geneticist at Genome Therapeutics Corporation, a small biotech company, and served as Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at Boston University School of Public Health.

Professor Dupuis has extensive experience in the development and application of methods for genome-wide association studies, gene by environment interaction investigation, genetic meta-analysis, rare variant analysis, and omics data analysis, with special emphasis on the development of novel statistical approaches to analyze genetic data collected on large families.

She is involved in the Framingham Heart Study and multiple international consortia, collaborating on projects to identify genes influencing diabetes related traits, pulmonary function traits, and Alzheimer’s Disease. She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and she is past-President of the International Genetic Epidemiology Society.

She was recently honoured with the International Genetic Epidemiology Leadership Award for her substantial contributions to the field and her service to the Society, and received the 2020 American Society of Human Genetics Mentorship Award. She is an Associate Editor for the journal Biostatistics.

Donald Estep

Don Estep

Committee Chair

Donald Estep is the Director of CANSSI. He joined the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science as Canadian Research Chair in Computational Probability and Uncertainty Quantification at Simon Fraser University. He moved from the Department of Statistics at Colorado State University, where he was Department Chair, University Distinguished Professor and University Interdisciplinary Research Scholar.

His research interests include uncertainty quantification for complex physics models, stochastic inverse problems, adaptive computation, and modeling of multiscale systems. Working with his collaborators, he has developed a systematic approach to a posteriori error estimation for simulations of complex systems, efficient numerical methods for uncertainty quantification for physical models, and theory and solution of inverse problems for stochastic parameters in physical models.

His application interests include ecology, materials science, detection of black holes, modeling of fusion reaction, analysis of nuclear fuels, hurricane wave forecasting, flow in porous media, and electromagnetic scattering. His research has been supported by multiple government agencies and national laboratories.

Don has served on several scientific advisory panels for the U.S. National Science Foundation and Department of Energy and on the Sandia National Laboratories CISE External Review Board and has co-authored several reports. He has served as the (founding) Chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Uncertainty Quantification, (founding) Co-Editor in Chief of the SIAM/ASA Journal on Uncertainty Quantification, and as SIAM representative to the Governing Board of SAMSI.

His awards include Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Computational and Mathematical Methods in Sciences and Engineering (CMMSE) Prize, and the Chalmers Jubilee Professorship of Chalmers University of Technology.

Sujit Ghosh

Sujit Ghosh

Term ends: December 2023

Sujit Ghosh is currently a Professor in the Department of Statistics at North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh. He has over 25 years of experience in conducting, applying, evaluating and documenting statistical analysis of biomedical and environmental data.

He has served as the Co-Director of Graduate Programs in Statistics at NCSU managing over 150 students annually during 2010-2013. He was also the Project Director of a training program for undergraduates funded by the NSF during 2007-2013.

Sujit served as the Program Director in the Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) within the Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) at NSF in 2013-2014. He also served as the Deputy Director at the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI) in 2014-2017.

He is actively involved in teaching, supervising and mentoring graduate students, and has supervised over 35 doctoral graduate students and 5 post-doctoral fellows. He was awarded the Cavell Brownie Mentoring Award at NCSU Statistics in 2014.

Sujit served as a statistical investigator and consultant for over 40 different research projects funded by various leading private industries and federal agencies (e.g., BAYER, CDC, GSK, MERCK, NIH, NISS, NSF, SAS, U.S.EPA, USDA-NASS etc.).

He has published over 120 refereed journal articles in the various areas of statistics, with applications in biomedical and environmental sciences, econometrics and engineering. Sujit has been regularly invited by peer institutions and conference organizers to present talks.

In recent years, Sujit has contributed significantly in developing statistical models and associated methodologies for various inferential problems that are subject to shape constraint. In 2016, he was invited to present the prestigious Helen Barton Lecture Series in Mathematical Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he delivered a series of three lectures on Statistical Inference Subject to Shape Constraint.

He received the International Indian Statistical Association (IISA) Young Investigator Award in 2008; was elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) in 2009 and as the President of the NC Chapter of ASA in 2013 and also the President of the IISA in 2017. He received the Honorary Doctorate in Statistics at Thammasat University (Thailand) in 2015.

Kerrie Mengersen

Kerrie Mengersen

Term ends: December 2025

Kerrie Mengersen holds a BA (Hons) in Mathematical Statistics and Computing and a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, both from the University of New England, New South Wales, Australia. She has held positions as a commercial statistical consultant and an academic staff member at four Australian universities. She is currently a Distinguished Research Professor in Statistical Science and the Director of the QUT Centre for Data Science at Queensland University of Technology and holds a concurrent role as Associate Member in the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford, UK. She was a Deputy Director in the ARC Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (2015–2021) and an ARC Laureate Fellow (2015–2021). In 2018 she was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (AAS), the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) and the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences (QAAS). She is an active member of the Institute for Mathematical Sciences, International Biometrics Society, International Statistical Institute and the Statistical Society of Australia.

Distinguished Professor Mengersen focuses on using and developing new statistical and computational methods that can help to solve complex problems in the real world. These problems are in the fields of environment, genetics, health and medicine, and industry. She enjoys working with a diverse range of people doing outstanding things in many different areas, and contributing expertise in an important component of their work. Her research interests include:

  • Complex systems modelling
  • Bayesian statistical modelling, computational methods and applications
  • Bayesian networks
  • Applied statistics.

Jessica Utts

Jessica Utts

Term ends: December 2025

Jessica Utts is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Statistics at University of California, Irvine, and was the 2016 President of the American Statistical Association (ASA). She has a long-standing interest in promoting statistical literacy, and has published three statistics textbooks with that emphasis. She is a Fellow of the ASA, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Association for Psychological Science. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the George Cobb Lifetime Achievement Award in Statistics Education, the Samuel S. Wilks, Memorial Award,  the ASA Founder’s Award, the IMS Harry C. Carver Medal, the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) Distinguished Service Award, and two campus-wide awards for distinguished teaching. She has served as President of the Western North American Region of the International Biometric Society, Chair of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS), Vice-Chair of the NISS Board, and a member of the Council of the International Statistical Institute. In addition to statistics education her research involves applications of statistics to a variety of areas, most notably parapsychology, for which she has appeared on TV shows including Larry King Live, Nightline and CNN News. Her most recent work is on incorporating ethics into data science education.

Past SAC Members

2022

  • Scarlett Bellamy, Drexel University (Jan 2022–Dec 2024)
  • Daniela Calvetti, Case Western Reserve University (Jan 2020–Dec 2022)
  • Merlise Clyde, Duke University (Jan 2020–Dec 2022)
  • Corina Constantinescu, University of Liverpool (Jan 2021–Dec 2023)
  • Aurore Delaigle, University of Melbourne (Jan 2022–Dec 2024)
  • Josée Dupuis, McGill University (Jan 2021–Dec 2023)
  • Donald Estep, CANSSI & Simon Fraser University (Jul 2019– )
  • Sujit Ghosh, North Carolina State University (Jan 2021–Dec 2023)
  • Naisyin Wang, University of Michigan (Jan 2020–Dec 2022)
  • Bin Yu, University of California, Berkeley (Jan 2021–Dec 2022)

2021

  • Amy Braverman, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA (Jan 2019–Dec 2021)
  • Daniela Calvetti, Case Western Reserve University (Jan 2020–Dec 2022)
  • Merlise Clyde, Duke University (Jan 2020–Dec 2022)
  • Corina Constantinescu, University of Liverpool (Jan 2021–Dec 2023)
  • Josée Dupuis, McGill University (Jan 2021–Dec 2023)
  • Donald Estep, CANSSI & Simon Fraser University (Jul 2019– )
  • Sujit Ghosh, North Carolina State University (Jan 2021–Dec 2023)
  • Marina Vannucci, Rice University (Jan 2019–Dec 2021)
  • Naisyin Wang, University of Michigan (Jan 2020–Dec 2022)
  • Bin Yu, University of California, Berkeley (Jan 2021–Dec 2023)

2020

  • Amy Braverman, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA (Jan 2019–Dec 2021)
  • Daniela Calvetti, Case Western Reserve University (Jan 2020–Dec 2022)
  • Merlise Clyde, Duke University (Jan 2020–Dec 2022)
  • Donald Estep, CANSSI & Simon Fraser University (Jul 2019– )
  • Yulia Gel, University of Texas at Dallas (Jan 2018–Dec 2020)
  • Xuming He, University of Michigan (Jan 2018–Dec 2020)
  • Doug Nychka, Colorado School of Mines (Oct 2015–Dec 2020)
  • David Stephens, McGill University (Apr 2016–Dec 2020)
  • Marina Vannucci, Rice University (Jan 2019–Dec 2021)
  • Naisyin Wang, University of Michigan (Jan 2020–Dec 2022)
Regional Directors

Regional Directors

Regional Directors play an advisory and operational role related to CANSSI programs and activities in their region as well as seeking regional support and building relationships between CANSSI and regional research enterprises.

Members include:

Joanna Mills Flemming | Regional Director, CANSSI Atlantic

Joanna Mills Flemming

Regional Director, CANSSI Atlantic
Dalhousie University
joanna.flemming@dal.ca

Joanna Mills Flemming is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Dalhousie University. She is a member of the International Scientific Advisory Committee for the Ocean Tracking Network (OTN), the Data Management Committee for OTN, and the Ransom Myers Legacy Committee at Dalhousie University.

She is the team leader for the “Advancements to state-space models for fisheries science” Collaborative Research Team project. She is also the associate editor of the Canadian Journal of Statistics and is finishing her term as a regional representative on the SSC’s Board of Directors.

Joanna’s research interests centre on the development of statistical methodology for data exhibiting spatial and temporal dependencies with a particular interest in what is important for marine ecology, and more broadly, environmental science. She has also recently become interested in how statistics are being used to help solve problems in Biomedical Engineering.

Mohammad Jafari Jozani | Regional Director, CANSSI Prairies

Mohammad Jafari Jozani

Regional Director, CANSSI Prairies
University of Manitoba
M_Jafari_Jozani@umanitoba.ca

Mohammad Jafari Jozani is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Statistics and an adjunct professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.

His current research involves statistical learning problems with high dimensional aspects in biostatistics, engineering and sustainable energy; small area estimation as well as statistical inference with complex sampling designs using order statistics and rank information. The focal point of his research program is on developing new methodologies, models and computational tools to solve data driven problems in a variety of application domains.

He has applied his research in areas such as breast cancer studies, BMD analysis and osteoporosis, mercury contamination in fish bodies, and recently in the calibration problems to design simulators for training purposes in order to make surgeries safer.

Mélina Mailhot | Interim Regional Director, CANSSI Québec

Interim Regional Director, CANSSI Québec
Concordia University
melina.mailhot@concordia.ca

Mélina Mailhot is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Concordia University. She joined the department after completing her PhD at Laval University in 2012 and teaches courses covering mathematics of finance, loss models, investment mathematics, risk theory, and risk measures.

She lists actuarial science, risk theory, dependence modelling, risk measures, and optimization among her research interests and states that her research focuses on the development and analysis of multivariate dependence structures and measures. Risks considered are related to insurable property and casualty perils.

Lisa J. Strug | Regional Director, CANSSI Ontario

Lisa Strug

Regional Director, CANSSI Ontario
University of Toronto
lisa.strug@utoronto.ca

Lisa J. Strug is a Senior Scientist at the Research Institute of The Hospital for Sick Children and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences and the Division of Biostatistics at the University of Toronto.

She is the Associate Director of The Centre for Applied Genomics, a federally funded Toronto-based genome centre and one of three centres contributing to a national platform providing genome sequencing and analysis services in Canada and Internationally.  Her research has focused on statistical genetics and genomics, on the foundations of statistics and on their intersection.

She is the associate editor and statistical genetics editor of npj Genomic Medicine and is the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Genome Data Sciences.

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