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Obituaries for January 2016

1 January 2016 809 views No Comment

Asit Prakas Basu

Asit Prakas Basu, 78, emeritus professor of statistics at the University of Missouri, died October 19, 2015, in Columbia, Missouri.

Basu was a fellow of the American Statistical Association, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Royal Statistical Society and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute.

He was also a life member of the Calcutta Statistical Association and a member of the ASA for more than 50 years.

He is survived by his wife, Sandra, and sons, Amit and Shumit.

Sholom Wacholder

Sholom Wacholder, a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), died on October 4, 2015, at his home in Rockville, Maryland.

Wacholder, a statistician by training, worked in the epidemiology and genetics division of the NCI for the past 30 years, exploring the causes of cancer from natural history studies through clinical trials. He was the lead statistician for the NCI study of the natural history of the human papillomavirus (HPV) and cancer. Wacholder spoke about his contributions to this body of work in a video titled “In Their Own Words: Dr. Sholom Wacholder,” completed in 2010.

Wacholder began working in genetic epidemiology with the Washington Ashkenazi Study and was one of the first to develop kin-cohort analysis, a novel sampling approach to eliminate statistical bias from studies of genetically similar populations. He was a key statistical consultant and analyst of the Cancer Genetic Markers of Susceptibility (CGEMS) project from its inception, thereby laying the foundation for the many disease-specific genome-wide association studies conducted over the past decade.

His interest in childhood cancers led him to research electromagnetic fields and childhood acute lymphocytic leukemia and later to pursue the inheritance of osteogenic sarcoma, a cancer that targets adolescents and young adults. He was also a key collaborator on large, comprehensive case-control studies of lung cancer and renal cell cancer.

Wacholder earned a PhD in biomathematics from the University of Washington in 1982. He was a fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the American Epidemiological Society. He served on the editorial boards of numerous journals, including Epidemiology, Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and American Journal of Epidemiology.

He is survived by his wife, Michelle; their two adult sons, Aaron and Jonah; his sisters and brother; and many nieces and nephews.

To read more about Wacholder’s life and legacy, visit NCI’s website.

Joel Ager

Joel Ager, a longtime faculty member of the Wayne State University School of Medicine, died November 15, 2015, at the age of 87.

Ager joined Wayne State University as an assistant professor of psychology in 1958, rising to the rank of full professor in 1975. He retired from the department of psychology in 1998, but continued working with the university and helped launch the Center for Healthcare Effectiveness Research in 1994. Ager served as interim director of the center from 1995 to 1997. He joined the department of family medicine and public health sciences in 2006 and continued his work as a part-time faculty member until his death.

A consummate researcher with fervor for exactitude, Ager served as a principal investigator for four National Institutes of Health grants on family planning services provision and as co-principal investigator for numerous other grants, including a number in the area of the effects of fetal exposure to alcohol and drugs on child development.

In addition to his academic accomplishments, he was an avid bird watcher and traveler.

Ager was predeceased by his wife, Elizabeth Cramer, in 1995 and is survived by his three children, his sister, and five grandchildren.

To read more about Ager’s life, visit the Wayne State University website.

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