(Three-year terms)
ACTUARIAL SCIENCES SECTION
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(One to be elected; to be President in 2016-17 and Past President in 2017-18)
X. Sheldon Lin
Sheldon Lin received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Alberta and his MMath in Actuarial Science from the University of Waterloo. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto from 1993 to 1997 and an Associate Professor at the University of Iowa from 1997 to 2000. He returned to the University of Toronto in 2001 and has been Professor of Actuarial Science in the Department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Toronto since 2002. He has been an Associate of the Society of Actuaries since 1993 and an Associate of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries since 2014. His research interests include insurance risk modelling and valuation of equity-linked insurance products, areas in which he has published extensively.
TREASURER
Jiandong Ren
Jiandon Ren is an associate Professor in the Department of Statistical and Actuarial Sciences at the University of Western Ontario. He graduated from Temple University with a PhD in Risk Management and Insurance in 2003. He has been a member of the Actuarial Science Section of the Statistical Society of Canada since it was established in 2012. His research interests are in the area of applications of stochastic process theory and statistics in Actuarial Science.
BIOSTATISTICS SECTION
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(One to be elected; to be President in 2016-17 and Past President in 2017-18)
Grace Y. Yi
Grace Yi is Professor and University Research Chair in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. Her research interests include the analysis of missing data, measurement error, longitudinal data, survival data and high dimensional data. She is an associate editor of various statistics journals, and has served for professional organizations, such as SSC, ASA and ICSA, in a variety of capacities.
TREASURER
Eleanor Pullenayegum
Eleanor’s career began at the University of Cambridge in England, where she worked as a consulting statistician in the Department of Public Health and Primary care after finishing her degree in mathematics. Having confirmed her enthusiasm for biostatistics, she moved to Canada to do her doctoral work at the University of Toronto, followed by postdoctoral work at the University of Waterloo. She has been on faculty at McMaster University (2007-2013) and now works as a Scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children and as Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include statistical methods for health economics and methods for longitudinal data, in particular the case where the observation schedule is stochastic and potentially informative. Having benefitted from the SSC as a way to share ideas and connect with colleagues, she looks forward to the opportunity to support its work.
BUSINESS AND INDUSTRIAL STATISTICS
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(One to be elected; to be President in 2016-17 et Président sortant en 2017-18)
François Bellavance
François Bellavance is Professor in the Department of Decision Sciences at HEC Montréal. He received his PhD in Statistics from the Université de Montréal in 1994. From 1990 to 1993, he directed the activities of the Statistical Consulting Service at Simon Fraser University. From 1994 to 1998, he worked as Biostatistician at St-Mary’s Hospital Center and was part-time Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McGill University. His current research interests and activities are in data mining applied to large administrative databases, mainly in the area of road safety. He is Director of the Quebec Road Safety Research Network (http://www.rrsr.ca/) since 2010. He is also a member of CIRRELT (https://www.cirrelt.ca/) and GERAD (https://www.gerad.ca/) research centers. He was President of the SSC Biostatistics Section in 2000-2001, and regional representative for Québec on the SSC Board of Directors from 1998 to 2000 and 2005 to 2009. He was member of the NSERC Research Grants Selection Committee for Statistics from 2006 to 2008.
TREASURER
Melody Ghahramani
Melody Ghahramani is Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at University of Winnipeg. Her research interests include inference using estimating functions with applications in finance and econometrics. She has served the SSC as Regional Representative, member of New Investigators Committee, and member of Committee on Membership.
PROBABILITY SECTION
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(One to be elected; to be President in 2016-17 and Past President in 2017-18)
Neal Madras
Neal Madras is Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at York University, where he served as Department Chair from 2003-2006 and as Interim Chair in 2012-2013. He received his BSc in Mathematics and Statistics from McGill University in 1979, and his Ph.D. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University in 1984. His research has spanned diverse areas of probability and applied mathematics, including convergence rates of Markov chains, discrete models from statistical mechanics, Monte Carlo methods, and mathematical biology. He is the co-author with Gordon Slade of the monograph “The Self-Avoiding Walk" (Birkhauser, 1993). Neal is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He is currently chair of the Canadian Mathematical Olympiad Committee of the Canadian Mathematical Society.
STATISTICAL EDUCATION SECTION
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(One to be elected; to be President in 2016-17 and Past President in 2017-18)
Jim Stallard
Jim Stallard serves the dual-role as a tenured Senior Instructor and Associate Department Head of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Calgary. He obtained his MSc in Statistics under the guidance of Dr Ernst Enns. He was the recipient of the Faculty of Science Excellence in Teaching Award in 2005. His current professional interests revolve around Statistics Education and the ever- growing field of hockey analytics. Jim has been a member of the SSC since 1995, and as recently as July 2014 has chaired the Statistics Education Committee. He is passionate about Statistics Education and energized by the SSC’s increasing interest in the area of statistics education. Jim looks forward to the future activities of the Statistics Education Section and how these activities will help support SSC members in their teaching. In his free time, he enjoys fishing in the foothills and chasing a puck around with people half his age.
TREASURER
Sunny Wang
Sunny Wang is an associate professor at St. Francis Xavier University. She graduated from the University of Waterloo with a PhD in Statistics. Her research, funded by NSERC, focuses on developing algorithms and methodologies in statistical learning and data mining with applications in drug discovery and health related research. She also dedicates herself to statistics education, and serves in SSC Education Section and SSC Case Study Committee.
SURVEY METHODS SECTION
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(One to be elected; to be President in 2016-17 and Past President in 2017-18)
Matthias Schonlau
Matthias Schonlau is Professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. He is Co-Director of the University of Waterloo Survey Research Centre. He is a board member of the European Survey Research Association. Prior to his academic career, he spent 14 years in industry at the RAND Corporation (USA), the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin (Germany), the German Institute for Economic Analysis (DIW), National Institute of Statistical Sciences (USA), and AT&T Labs Research (USA). Dr. Schonlau’s research interests evolve around survey methodology. Current work includes the use of text mining to analyze open-ended questions. He is the lead author of the book “Conducting Research Surveys via E-Mail and the Web". His Stata implementation of respondent driven sampling (RDS) is being used in more than a dozen countries.
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
(Two year Term)
Catherine Deshaies-Moreault
Catherine Deshaies-Moreault graduated from Université de Montréal in 2011 with a Bachelor of Science. Her studies in mathematics and statistics led her to work for Statistics Canada. She has been a methodologist in the Business Survey Methods Division since May 2011. She is currently working on the Consumer Price Index. Through her work, she has gained experience in various areas, such as sampling and estimation. She has been the secretary of the Survey Methods Section since 2013.