Bovas Abraham

Bovas Abraham

Bovas Abraham was awarded honorary membership in the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) this past May, during the society’s annual meeting in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Abraham was recognized for his exceptional contributions to the development of statistical sciences in Canada and internationally. The citation for the honorary membership award reads:

To Bovas Abraham, for his fundamental contributions to the statistical sciences, advances in time series analysis, statistical methods for quality improvement, and industrial statistics; for dissemination of statistical methodology through authorship of textbooks; and for his service as founding president of the Business and Industrial Statistics Section and president of the Statistical Society of Canada.

Abraham is professor emeritus in the department of statistics and actuarial science at the University of Waterloo. He has devoted his talent and energy to the statistical sciences in many capacities. He is a former president of the SSC and the founding president of the Business and Industrial Statistics Section of the SSC, as well as the founding president of the International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics.

He is co-author of Statistical Methods for Forecasting and Introduction to Regression Modeling and is a fellow of the American Society for Quality, American Statistical Association, and Royal Statistical Society. He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He also has been awarded the International Statistical Institute’s Service Award and the American Society for Quality’s William G. Hunter award.

Susan Murphy

ASA member and University of Michigan statistics professor Susan Murphy was named a MacArthur Foundation fellow September 24. She was honored for her work developing new methodologies to evaluate courses of treatment for individuals coping with chronic or relapsing disorders, such as depression or substance abuse. Murphy’s Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trial (SMART) is a means for learning how best to dynamically adapt treatment to an individual’s response over time. “By translating statistical theory into powerful tools for evaluating and tailoring complex medical therapies, Murphy is poised to have a significant impact on the field of personalized medicine, an area of great activity in biomedical research today,” the foundation wrote. An online interview with Murphy is available on the MacArthur Foundation website.

David Madigan

ASA member and Columbia University statistics professor David Madigan was named executive vice president and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences by university President Lee C. Bollinger. Madigan has been the interim dean since March. He joined Columbia’s faculty in 2007 as a professor of statistics and became the department chair the following year.

“In his important new leadership role, David will be called on to sustain and further strengthen Columbia’s academic excellence, expand our interdisciplinary programs, and make this core academic community of arts and sciences even more diverse,” Bollinger said.

Madigan said fostering a more diverse faculty is one of his key objectives, along with supporting the highest quality teaching and learning. “As interim executive vice president I have experienced first hand the extraordinary quality and brilliance of the faculty and students here at Columbia and the attendant responsibility we have to do good in the world,” he said. “I am excited and humbled to take on this role.”

Born in Ireland, Madigan earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematical sciences and a PhD in statistics from Trinity College, Dublin. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.