MEMBERS OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
(Three-year Terms)
PRESIDENT-ELECT
[President, 2018-19; Past President, 2019-20]
Robert Platt, McGill University
Robert Platt received his BSc from McGill in mathematics (1990), MSc from University of Manitoba in statistics (1993), and MS and PhD in biostatistics from the University of Washington (1994, 1996). He has been on faculty at McGill since 1996, where he was appointed Albert Boehringer endowed chair in 2016. From 2005-2011 he was the director of the Biostatistics graduate program at McGill. He led a significant redevelopment of McGill’s biostatistics graduate programs in 2006-07. He is co-principal investigator and leader of the methods team for the Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies. His research interests are focused on design and analysis of drug safety studies in large administrative datasets. He has served as president of the SSC Biostatistics Section (2007-8 and 2009-10) and as biostatistics liaison to other societies (2011-13). He was president of the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology in 2012-13. Robert looks forward to working for and with the SSC.
TREASURER
Edward Chen, Statistics Canada
Edward Chen, P.Stat., has been employed at Statistics Canada since 1986. Currently, he is a chief in the Social Survey Methods Division and devotes his energy to the most successful Census of Population in the history. He leads a team in improving the address register and ensuring the coverage of the Census. Previously, he was a chief and devoted over 25 years to the excellence of Statistics Canada’s household survey program. Edward is very active in the statistical and local communities. He was Treasurer of the Statistical Society of Canada from 2005 to 2009 when he started putting the SSC finance in good order. He was elected as Treasurer again in 2014 and also elected as a member of the Accreditation Appeals Committee. Edward was Treasurer of the Statistical Society of Ottawa from 1999 to 2003 and treasurer of other organizations before.
MEETINGS CO-ORDINATOR
Changbao Wu, University of Waterloo
Changbao Wu is a Professor of Statistics in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. He is a Fellow of ASA, an Elected Member of ISI and the 2012 recipient of the CRM-SSC Prize in Statistics. He has served as an Associate Editor for several statistical journals including CJS and Biometrika. He was the President of the Survey Methods Section of SSC in 2005 and the Program Chair of the 2014 SSC Annual Meeting in Toronto. He is the current Chair of the ICSA Canada Chapter and the current Meetings Coordinator of SSC.
REGIONAL REPRESENTATIVES ON THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
(Two-Year Terms)
ATLANTIC PROVINCES
(One To Be Elected)
Tess Astatkie, Dalhousie University Truro
Tess Astatkie is a Professor in the Faculty of Agrictulture of Dalhousie University, and is a Professional Statistician accredited by the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) and the American Statistical Association (ASA). He received his PhD in Statistics from Queen's University. Tess conducts independent and collavorative research in several areas of statistics including regression analysis and design and anaylsis of experiments. He collaborated with several researchers in 14 countries who specialize in agriculture, food processing, human nutrition and post-harvest management. Manuscripts from these collaborations were published in over 50 different journals. He also provides a statistical consulting service to faculty members and graduate students of Dalhousie Agricultural Campus. Tess has been a member of SSC and ASA for more than 25 years, and served on the Accreditation Committee of SSC from 2010 to 2014; currently he is serving on the Accreditation Committee of ASA.
Ying Zhang, Acadia University
Ying Zhang is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics and has been the Director of the Statistical Consulting Centre since coming to Acadia University in 2004. Prior to this, she was manager of the Statistical Laboratory at Western University (2001-2004), and has been an active statistical consultant since 1999. Ying is interested in applied statistical methodology research and consulting, specializing in time series analysis and nonparametric statistics.
QUÉBEC
(Two to be elected)
Andrea Benedetti, McGill University
Andrea Benedetti is an Associate Professor, jointly appointed in the departments of Epidemiology, Biostatistics & Occupational Health and Medicine at McGill University. Andrea has served on the SSC board as Regional Representative for Quebec for the past two years, and was previously a Local Representative. She is co-chair of the local organizing committee for the SSC annual conference in Montreal in 2018. Andrea’s research interests are in the statistical challenges in individual patient data meta-analyses, with applications in respiratory health.
Aurélie Labbe, HEC Montréal
Aurélie Labbe has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Decision Sciences at HEC Montréal since September 2016. After completing her PhD in Statistics at the University of Waterloo in 2005, she was Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of Laval University from 2005 to 2009, and Assistant Professor and later Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University until 2016. Her research focuses mainly on high-dimensional data with applications in the areas of statistical genetics and intelligent transport. Aurélie was involved in the SSC as a Quebec Regional Representative from 2009 to 2011, member of the Student Travel Grants Committee from 2006 to 2009, and member of the CJS Award Committee from 2007 to 2010. She has been a member of the Bilingualism Committee since 2016.
Johanna Nešlehová, McGill University
Johanna G. Nešlehová is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at McGill University. She obtained an MSc from the University of Hamburg (2000) and a PhD from the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg (2004). After graduation, she was a postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zürich and at the Harvard Medical School, and later a Heinz Hopf Lecturer at ETH Zürich (2006-09). Her current research interests lie in extreme-value analysis and dependence modeling with applications in biostatistics, hydrology and risk management. Johanna is an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute and she received the P.Stat. designation in 2015. She has been involved with the SSC since her arrival in Canada in 2009. Among others, she served on the Pierre Robillard Award Committee (once as chair) and The Canadian Journal of Statistics Award Committee.
Jean-François Plante, HEC Montréal
Jean-François Plante is an Associate Professor at HEC Montréal. He has been involved in the SSC continuously since 2009. He is currently the managing editor of The Canadian Journal of Statistics, a member of the Electronic Services Development Committee, and an associate editor of Liaison. From 2013 to 2016 he served as Public Relations Officer, being de facto a member of the Executive Committee and of the Board. Jean-François received his training from Laval University (BSc, MSc), the University of British Columbia (PhD) and the University of Toronto (postdoc). He also spent a sabbatical at the University of Waterloo. His current research interests focus on statistical methods for distributed (big) data.
ONTARIO
(Two to be elected)
Xin Gao, York University
Xin Gao received her MS degree in statistics from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1998. From 1998 to 2000 she worked as a biostatistician at the Human Cancer Center of Ohio University working in the statistical genetics field. Later she received her PhD degree in statistics from the University of Ottawa in 2003. Joining the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at York University in 2003, Xin has been a full professor since 2014. She received the Young Investigator Award from Petro Canada/York University. Xin served as the President of the Southern Ontario Regional Statistical Association from 2012-2015 and is currently serving on the editorial board of The Canadian Journal of Statistics.
Bethany White, University of Toronto
Bethany White is an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Toronto. Her research interests involve the impact of simulation and technology-enhanced activities on student learning and attitudes toward statistics. She served on the SSC Statistical Education Section Executive Committee between 2013-2016 (President of the Section for 2014-2015), is the Editor of the Data Sets and Stories section of the Journal of Statistics Education, is a member of the book reviews editorial board for The American Statistician and the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and has served on organizing committees for statistics and science education workshops and conferences in Canada and the US.
Leilei Zeng, University of Waterloo
Leilei Zeng is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics & Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. Her research interest lies in the development of methodology for event history and longitudinal data analyses, the design of clinical and epidemiological studies, and incomplete data. Leilei received both her MMath and PhD degrees from the University of Waterloo. Upon graduation she worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at Simon Fraser University, with a joint-appointment to the Faculty of Health Sciences. She joined the University of Waterloo in 2011 as an Associate Professor and the Graham Trust Chair in Health Statistics. Leilei has been involved with the SSC since early in her career. She was on the SSC Committee on Women in Statistics (COWIS), the SSC representative at the Caucus for Women in Statistics and at the ASA COWIS. She is currently the local representative of SSC at the University of Waterloo.
MANITOBA - SASKATCHEWAN - NORTHWEST TERRITORIES - NUNAVUT
(One to be elected)
Katherine Davies, University of Manitoba
Katherine Davies is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Manitoba where she joined as an Assistant Professor in 2008. Prior to moving to Winnipeg, she lived in Ontario, completing both an Honours BSc and an MSc degree from McMaster University, and a PhD from the University of Western Ontario. Katherine’s current research interests include order statistics, censoring methodologies and censored data analysis. She is an active researcher and supervisor of graduate students. A member of the SSC since her graduate studies, she has served on the Committee on New Investigators, the Committee on Women in Statistics and has served as the SSC representative to the Caucus on Women in Statistics and on the SSC’s Board of Directors. Katherine is also a member of the American Statistical Association and the International Indian Statistical Association. She recently organized an international conference held at McMaster University.
Melody Ghahramani, University of Winnipeg
Melody Ghahramani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Winnipeg. Her current research interests include semi-parametric methods for the analysis of integer-valued time series data. She has been active in the SSC by serving as the Manitoba-Saskatchewan-N.W.T.- Nunavut regional representative (2010-2012), member of Committees on Membership (2010-2012) and New Investigators (2010-2013). Presently, she serves as Treasurer for BISS (2015-2018).
Lisa Lix, University of Manitoba
Lisa Lix is a Professor of Biostatistics and Manitoba Research Chair in the Max Rady College of Medicine at the University of Manitoba. She is also Director of the Data Science Platform in the George and Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation. Lisa’s areas of research expertise include health services research methods, statistical methods for evaluation of the quality of administrative health databases, the analysis of repeated measures and longitudinal data, and robust statistics. She is co-chair of the Scientific Committee for the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Canadian Chronic Disease Surveillance System. She collaborates widely on projects about population health and the association between chronic disease and quality of life. Lisa has previously served as President of the Biostatistics Section of the SSC and currently chairs the Case Studies in Data Analysis Competition.
ALBERTA - BRITISH COLUMBIA - YUKON
(One to be elected)
Tim Swartz, Simon Fraser University
Tim Swartz is a Professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at Simon Fraser University. He obtained the PhD and MSc from the University of Toronto and the BMath from the University of Waterloo. Much of his early work concerned computational statistics and Bayesian methods. These days, he spends most of his time on sports analytics.