2020 SSC elections
In compliance with the SSC By-Laws, the election committee is publishing a list of candidates for positions on the executive and board of directors that will become vacant on July 1, 2020. In addition, candidates for positions on the executives of the sections are provided. The biographical sketches for all candidates follow. Elections will start in late April 2020.
MEMBERS OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
(Three-year terms)
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(President, 2021–22; Past President, 2022–23)
Grace Yi, Western University
Grace Y. Yi is a professor of the University of Western Ontario where she currently holds a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Data Science. Grace's research interests focus on developing methodology to address challenges concerning measurement error, causal inference, imaging data, missing data, high dimensional data, survival data, and longitudinal data.
Grace received her PhD in Statistics from the University of Toronto in 2000 and then joined the University of Waterloo as a postdoctoral fellow (2000–2001), assistant professor (2001–2004), associate professor (2004–2010), professor (2010–2019), and university research chair (2011–2018). She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. Grace received the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques and the Statistical Society of Canada (CRM-SSC) Prize in 2010 and the University Faculty Award (2004–2009) granted by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Her work with Xianming Tan and Runze Li won The Canadian Journal of Statistics Award in 2016.
Grace has served the professions in various capacities. She was the editor in chief of The Canadian Journal of Statistics (2016–2018) as well as the president of the Biostatistics Section of the Statistical Society of Canada in 2016, and the founder of the first chapter (Canada Chapter, established in 2012) of International Chinese Statistical Association.
TREASURER
Patrick Brown, University of Toronto
Patrick Brown is a scientist in the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael's Hospital, and associate professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on models and inference methodologies for spatio-temporal data, motivated by problems in the study of global mortality causes and trends. Current research includes methods for quantifying the relationship between daily air quality measurements and mortality, geostatistical spatio-temporal models for aggregated and censored case counts, Bayesian computation for survival models, and statistical computing on graphics processors. He has developed and maintains several R packages for modelling and visualizing spatial data.
As a member of the SSC since 2006, Patrick has served as treasurer to the Biostatistics Section (2009–2025), Biostatistics president (past-serving-elect 2017–2020), and local co-organizer for the 2014 SSC.
MEETINGS COORDINATOR
Nadia Ghazzali, University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières
Nadia Ghazzali is full professor of statistics at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR). Nadia received a Bachelor in Mathematics, a Master in Mathematics and Engineering, and a Doctorate in Statistics, at the Université de Rennes I, France. She arrived in Canada in 1992 as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at McGill University. From 1993 to 2012, she was a professor of statistics at Université Laval. From 2012 to 2015, she was Rector at UQTR. Her research interests include supervised clustering, unsupervised clustering, neural networks, and data science with applications in astrophysics, biostatistics, pattern recognition, and digital and medical imaging. Nadia was involved in the SSC as regional representative of Quebec on the board of directors and as chair of the committee on women in statistics. Finally, Nadia was holder of the NSERC-Industrial Alliance for Women in Science and Engineering in Quebec, member of the Hassan II Academy of Science and Technology of Morocco, member of the Expert Panel on Women in University Research Council of Canadian Academies and currently member of the national et international juries of L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science.
REGIONAL REPRESENTATIVES ON THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
(Two-year terms)
ATLANTIC PROVINCES
(One to be elected)
Michael McIsaac, UPEI
Dr. Michael McIsaac received his BSc in Honours Mathematics from UPEI (2007), and his MMath (2008) and PhD (2013) in Statistics from the University of Waterloo.
After working as a faculty member and program director for the MSc Biostatistics program at Queen’s University in Kingston from 2013–2018, Michael McIsaac returned to his alma mater, the University of Prince Edward Island, and is an associate professor in UPEI's newly-formed School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences.
Michael’s main research interests relate to efficient two-phase study designs, statistical methods for the analysis of incomplete data, and in the development and application of statistical methods for health studies. Michael is also interested in statistical education and pedagogy, and earned a Certificate in University Teaching from Waterloo's Centre for Teaching Excellence.
Dr. McIsaac is completing a term on the SSC board of directors as an Ontario regional representative (2018–2020) and, given his recent move back to Prince Edward Island, is now standing for election as a regional representative from the Atlantic provinces. Michael also served as a member (2014–2017) and chair (2016–2017) of the SSC’s new investigators committee, and has served as a member of ENAR’s Council for Emerging and New Statisticians (2014–2017) and as a member of CENS' steering committee (2015–2017).
Guohua Yan, University of New Brunswick
Guohua Yan is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of New Brunswick. He received his PhD in 2008 from the University of British Columbia and joined the University of New Brunswick since then. His current research focuses on random effects models, Bayesian analysis and mixture models.
Asokan Varyath, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Asokan Mulayath Variyath is an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the Memorial University. During 1991–2001, he worked as a faculty member at SQC & OR Division of Indian Statistical Institute. He obtained his PhD in Statistics from University of Waterloo in 2006 and then moved to Texas A & M University as postdoc. In 2008, he joined Memorial University as assistant professor of statistics. His main research interests are industrial statistics, design of experiments, survival analysis and longitudinal studies. He has become involved in the development of the new first year statistics course at Memorial and also undertook a project “Improving the Students' Learning Process through the Use of Statistical Applets.” He has served SSC as a member of students travel grant committee, president of SSC Education Section 2018–19, and co-chair of the local organizing committee of SSC Annual Meeting 2021.
QUEBEC
(Two to be elected)
Cody Hyndman, Concordia University
Cody Hyndman is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Concordia University. After completing his PhD in Statistics at the University of Waterloo in 2005, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Calgary from 2005 to 2006, joined Concordia as an assistant professor in 2006, and was appointed chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in July 2017. His research focuses mainly on stochastic methods in finance, forward-backward stochastic differential equations, and stochastic filtering. He has served the SSC as a Quebec representative (2018–2020) on the board of directors, a member of the fundraising committee since 2018, and organized invited paper sessions at the SSC meetings in 2012 and 2016. He was a guest editor of the March 2020 special issue of The Canadian Journal of Statistics on "Stochastic Models, Statistics, and Finance" and contributed to establishing the CANSSI Quebec regional node at Concordia.
Karim Oualkacha, University of Quebec at Montréal
Karim Oualkacha is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He received BSc in Mathematics and MSc in Statistics and Operational Research from the University of Caddi Ayyad (Marrakesh), and MSc and PhD in Statistics from Laval University. His research interests are in the statistical challenges of sparse high-dimensional data and dependence modelling with applications in the area of statistical genetics. Karim has been involved with the SSC since 2012. Among others, he has served as a member of the student travel grants committee from 2012 to 2015, and he is the institutional representative of UQAM within the SSC since 2016.
Paramita Chaudhuri, McGill University
Paramita Saha Chaudhuri is an assistant professor of biostatistics at the McGill University. She received her MStat from Indian Statistical Institute and her PhD from University of Washington, Seattle. Her research interest spans methods for observational studies and in particular development and assessment of prediction models, longitudinal and time-to-event studies and privacy-preserving statistical modelling. She has been involved with SSC since 2015, most recently as a member of the Student Travel Award committee (2019–2021). More information about her recent research are available on her webpage: http://sites.google.com/site/paramitasaharesearch/
Denis Talbot, Laval University
Denis Talbot is an associate professor in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at Laval University. He completed his training in statistics at Laval University (BSc, MSc), Université du Québec à Montréal (PhD) and University of Washington (postdoc). He was editor in chief for the journal of the Association des statisticiennes et statisticiens du Québec between 2012 and 2017, and member of the bilingualism committee of the SSC from 2016 to 2018. His research interests concern causal inference, particularly model selection, treatment regimes, mediation analysis, machine learning and the challenges related to analyzing electronic health records data.
ONTARIO
(Two to be elected)
Edward Chen, Statistics Canada
Edward J. Chen, P.Stat., has been employed at Statistics Canada since 1986. Currently, he is a chief of Methodology and devotes his passion and energy to the most successful Census of Population in the Canadian history. Edward leads a team in improving the address register and ensuring the coverage of the Census. Previously, he was a chief of Methodology and devoted over 25 years to the excellence of Statistics Canada’s household survey program including the Canadian Labour Force Survey.
Edward is very active in the statistical and local communities. He served two terms as SSC treasurer from 2005 to 2009 when he started putting the SSC finance in good order. He was elected as a SSC board member from 2009 to 2011. He served again as SSC treasurer for two more terms from 2014 until 2019. Edward is also elected as a member of the SSC accreditation appeals committee and served as in many capacities for the SSC including the associate editor for the Liaison newsletter for 12 years and SSC committees including the SSC fundraising committee. Previously, Edward was treasurer of the Statistical Society of Ottawa from 1999 to 2003 and treasurers of other local organizations.
Zeny Feng, University of Guelph
Zeny Feng is a professor of statistics, graduate coordinator at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and a core member in the graduate program in bioinformatics, University of Guelph. She obtained her MSc and PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Waterloo. She had her postdoctoral research training in the Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health. Her research has focused on the statistical and bioinformatic methodology development for studies of genetics, genomics, and metagenomics. She is also interested in modelling the spread of infectious diseases. She had served on the research committee (2017–2020) and committee member of NSERC Discovery Grant evaluation group of Mathematics and Statistics. She is now serving the speaker selection committee for the joint Fields Institute and CANSSI Distinguished Lecture Series in Statistics (2019–2022).
Melanie Poulin-Costello, Roche
Melanie Poulin-Costello is director of biostatistics for Hoffman La Roche in product development. Melanie oversees a team of 35 biostatisticians working on clinical trials from first in human to phase 3, including regulatory filing and some post marketing. She also oversees the statistical aspects of drug development for ALK+ lung cancer and skin and rare disease cancers at Roche. In addition, Melanie is passionate about alternative clinical trial designs as evidenced by her involvement in the Placebo/Standard of care data sharing initiative within TransCelerate. Prior to Roche Melanie worked at Amgen and at Bayer as a statistical scientist in clinical trials extending her experience to include health technology assessments while at Amgen. She has an MSc in statistics from the University of Victoria and BMath from University of Waterloo. Melanie is also currently an adjunct professor in biostatistics at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at University of Toronto. Melanie is also an active member of PSI. Much of her spare time is spent in the arts with painting and photography. She is an avid cyclist, loves wilderness hiking and most recently obtained her scuba certification in Belize.
Michael Wallace, University of Waterloo
Michael Wallace is an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. Originally from the UK, he moved to Canada in 2013 to take up a postdoctoral fellowship at McGill, prior to his current appointment. A biostatistician, Michael's research centres around causal inference with a particular focus on precision medicine and missing or mis-measured data. Michael hopes to contribute to the SSC board through two important areas of experience. First, as a keen proponent of communicating the importance of statistics and statistical thinking, he has served on the editorial board for Significance magazine for eight years. Second, motivated by his experiences living and working with a physical disability, Michael is a strong advocate for representation of the rights and needs of marginalized groups, especially within professional organizations. Within academia, he has contributed to this cause as a member of the University of Waterloo's equity committee, and he hopes to increase awareness and accommodation of these issues within the SSC.
Olli Saarela, University of Toronto
Olli Saarela is an associate professor in the biostatistics division of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (DLSPH), University of Toronto. He completed his Master and PhD in Statistics at University of Helsinki, Finland, while also gaining many years of experience working as a biostatistician in cardiovascular disease research projects at the National Institute for Health and Welfare of Finland during his studies. Following a postdoctoral fellowship and a brief spell as a faculty member at McGill University, he joined the DLSPH in 2014. His research is in the field of causal inference methodology, with applications for example to health services research and clinical trials. A member of the SSC since 2011, Olli is also a member of the executive committee of the Southern Ontario Regional Association of the SSC, and has been for several years involved in organizing their annual workshop/DLPSH Biostatistics research day; he is keen to serve the Ontario statistical community as a regional representative to the SSC.
MANITOBA–SASKATCHEWAN–NORTHWEST TERRITORIES–NUNAVUT
(One to be elected)
Mohammad Jafari Jozani, University of Manitoba
Mohammad is an associate professor of statistics and an adjunct member of the Biomedical Engineering (BME) program at the University of Manitoba. He is an associate director of CANSSI for Manitoba/Saskatchewan/NWT/Nunavut Region. He is also serving the Manitoba Statistical and Health Sciences (MB-SAHS) collaborating center of CANSSI and has been a member of the Student Research Presentation Award committee of SSC since 2019.
His research program consists of data centric approaches for developing fundamental theories, new methodologies and computational tools to solve problems of relevance in a variety of application domains. Currently, at his Complex Analytics Research Lab (CARL), he is working on statistical learning problems that have high dimensional aspects and involve big data. His research team is one of the main contributors to the area of statistical learning with complex sampling designs using order statistics and rank information. He has applied his research in heath condition monitoring, breast cancer studies, osteoporosis diagnosis, environmental risks, and recently in the calibration problems to design surgical simulators for training purposes in order to make surgeries safer.
Yang Zhao, University of Regina
Yang Zhao is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Regina, where she joined as an assistant professor in 2005. She completed a MSc in Statistics from Victoria University in 2000 and PhD in Statistics from the University of Waterloo in 2005. Her research focuses mainly on inference for regression models with missing data. She has served on the organizing committee of the annual meeting of the Prairie Network of Research in the Mathematical Science (PNRMS) in 2011 and young investigators committee during 2010–2013, has organized invited paper sessions at ICSA-Canada Chapter 2015 Symposium. Yang is currently serving CANSSI health sciences committee at Saskatchewan Health Science Collaborating Centre.
ALBERTA–BRITISH COLUMBIA–YUKON
(One to be elected)
Linglong Kong, University of Alberta
Dr. Linglong Kong is an associate professor at the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences of the University of Alberta. He is a Canadian Research Chair in Statistical Learning (Tier II, 2020–2025). He has published about 40 peer-reviewed manuscripts including top journals AOS, JASA and JRSSB, and top conferences ICML, ICDM, AAAI and IJCAI. Currently, Linglong is serving as associate editors of Journal of the American Statistical Association, International Journal of Imaging Systems and Technology, The Canadian Journal of Statistics, and the ASA Statistical Imaging Session program chair. His research interests include statistical machine learning, high-dimensional data analysis, neuroimaging data analysis, robust statistics and quantile regression.
Ehsan Karim, University of British Columbia
Dr. M. Ehsan Karim is an assistant professor at the School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia (UBC); a scientist and biostatistician at the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences (CHÉOS), St. Paul's Hospital; and an associate member at the Department of Statistics, UBC. He obtained his PhD in Statistics from UBC, completed his postgraduate training in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health at McGill, and was also a trainee at the Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies (CNODES). His current program of research focuses on developing causal inference methodologies and applications of data science approaches in the large healthcare data context in answering real-world questions, supported by the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar Award, grants from NSERC and BC SUPPORT Unit. He has previously served as a judge in the annual SSC meeting poster session in 2016 and 2019, an organizer of a case study in 2019, and is currently serving as a member of the SSC Award for Case Studies in Data Analysis committee since 2018 (three-year term), and a judge for the poster session in the Canadian Statistical Student Conference (CSSC) this year.
SECTION EXECUTIVES
ACTUARIAL SCIENCE SECTION EXECUTIVE
(Three-year terms; 2020–23)
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(President, 2021–22; Past President, 2022–23)
Andrei Badescu, University of Toronto
BIOSTATISTICS SECTION EXECUTIVE
(Three-year terms; 2020–23)
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(President, 2021–22; Past President, 2022–23)
Rob Deardon, University of Calgary
Rob Deardon is an associate professor of biostatistics with a joint position in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Calgary. Much of his recent work has been in the area of infectious disease modelling, but he is also interested in Bayesian & computational statistics, experimental design, disease surveillance methods, spatio-temporal modelling, statistical learning and statistical modelling in general. He currently has a research group of around 10 postdocs and research students. He is also currently coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Biostatistics Graduate Program at the University of Calgary, and this past year has been serving as chair of the statistics stream of the NSERC Discovery Grant Math & Stats Evaluation Group. Previous to his post at the University of Calgary, he spent eight years as faculty in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Guelph, and held postdoctoral positions at the Universities of Cambridge and Warwick. His PhD, in the area of agricultural experimental design, was obtained from the University of Reading in 2001.
BUSINESS AND INDUSTRIAL STATISTICS SECTION EXECUTIVE
(Three-year terms; 2020–23)
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(President, 2021–22; Past President, 2022–23)
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 and a Quebec representative on the board of the SSC. 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 and applications of statistical learning.
DATA SCIENCE AND ANALYTICS SECTION EXECUTIVE
(Three-year terms; 2020–23, with the exception of President—two-year terms, 2020–22)
PRESIDENT
(Past President, 2021–22)
Nathan Taback, University of Toronto
Nathan is currently an associate professor, teaching stream, in the Department of Statistical Sciences (cross-appointed in Computer Science) at the University of Toronto. He is the director of Data Science Programs in Statistical Sciences which includes an undergraduate Data Science program, and the Master of Science in Applied Computing—Data Science concentration. During the past several years he has been involved in developing data science curriculum, courses, and internship opportunities at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In 2016 he started ASA DataFest@UofT —an undergraduate data science contest, and has developed other experiential learning opportunities for students. His research interests include data science and statistics education, statistical communication, and biostatistics.
Before joining the University of Toronto as a full-time faculty, Nathan worked as a biostatistician and statistical consultant. After graduating he worked as biostatistician at GSK then as a faculty research scientist at the Center for Biostatistics in AIDS Research (CBAR) at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a senior statistician in the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG). During his time at GSK and CBAR he was involved in the design and analysis of clinical trials. As a statistical consultant, he continued to work on clinical trials as well as projects in disparate fields, such as measuring patterns of sexual violence and violence against humanitarian aid workers, and journalists in armed conflict; identifying institutional variation in adherence to cancer treatment guidelines with researchers at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute; and testifying as an expert witness in statistics.
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(President, 2021–22; Past President, 2022–23)
Nathaniel Stevens, University of Waterloo
Nathaniel Stevens is an assistant professor of statistics in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. Prior to this Nathaniel held a faculty position at the University of San Francisco in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics where he served as program director for the undergraduate data science program. Having overseen 30+ data science internships at 20+ companies, Nathaniel is interested in using statistics to solve practical problems, and he has a passion for inspiring and training students to do the same. His research interests lie at the intersection of data science and industrial statistics; his publications span topics including experimental design and A/B testing, social network modelling and monitoring, survival and reliability analysis, measurement system analysis, and the development of estimation-based alternatives to traditional hypothesis testing.
SECRETARY
Alberto Nettel-Aguirre, University of Calgary
TREASURER
Shirley Mills, Carleton University
Shirley Mills is currently the inaugural interim treasurer of the Data Science and Analytics Section. She is a professor of mathematics & statistics at Carleton University (1983– ) and executive director of the Statistical Society of Canada (2011– ). Trained as a mathematical statistician and a graduate of the University of Alberta (PhD 1983) and University of Manitoba (BSc (Dbl.Hon.)1969, MSc 1970, Sec. Ed. Cert. 1971), she has been a professor since 1971 and has held positions in universities in Manitoba, Alberta, and Ontario. Her specialty evolved into applied statistics and data science and she has supervised over 100 graduate students. She founded and was director of the Statistical Consulting Centre at Carleton (1987–1994). In recognition of her SSC involvement over four decades, including as SSC executive secretary for two terms, she received the SSC 2015 Distinguished Service Award. She also received the 2019 Honoured Alumni of the Year from the University of Manitoba Department of Statistics and the 2018 Faculty of Science Impact Award from Carleton University, for outstanding contributions in research, teaching, and service. She served as president of the Statistical Society of Ottawa, two terms as treasurer of CAUT & the CAUT Defence Fund, as president of the Carleton University Academic Association, over 10 years on the pension committee of Carleton University, as the Faculty of Science rep to the Carleton University Senate, as the Senate rep to the Carleton University Board of Governors, and as president of her Community Association in Ottawa.
PROBABILITY SECTION EXECUTIVE
(Three-year terms; 2020–23)
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(President, 2021–22; Past President, 2022–23)
Éric Marchand, University of Sherbrooke
Éric Marchand has been a full professor in the Department of Mathematics of the Université de Sherbrooke since 2004. Prior to that, he was at the University of New Brunswick and completed his PhD work at the Université de Montréal in 1990. He served as department chair from 2004 to 2010 and as director of the Statistics Laboratory of the CRM from 2015–2019. Among other responsibilities, he served on the NSERC selection committee for mathematics and statistics and he was a member of the Board of Governors at the Université de Sherbrooke. Over the years, Éric has been active within the SSC such as being a regional representative on the board, a member of the CJS Award, the Lise Manchester Award and bilingualism committees, as president and member of the Pierre Robillard Award and research committees. He is currently serving on the awards committee.
Continuously funded by NSERC for almost 30 years, his research interests include Bayesian statistics, multivariate analysis, and statistical inference in general, as well discrete probability models.
TREASURER
Gennady Shaikhet, Carleton University
Gennady Shaikhet is an associate professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, at Carleton University. He received his MSc and PhD in Statistics from the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology in 2007. He then spent three years in Pittsburgh, US, at the Department of Mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University, and joined Carleton in July 2010. Gennady’s areas of interest are probability theory, stochastic processes and applications: approximations and control of large scale service networks, financial engineering, and operations management. Gennady has been a treasurer for the Probability Section of the SSC since July 2017.
STATISTICAL EDUCATION SECTION EXECUTIVE
(Three-year terms; 2020–23)
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(President, 2021–22; Past President, 2022–23)
Bruce Dunham, University of British Columbia
Prof. Bruce Dunham is a professor of teaching in the Department of Statistics at the University of British Columbia. Prior to arriving at UBC in 2005 he held positions at the universities of Nottingham and Derby in England, his native country. Prof. Dunham studied at the University of London for a PhD in Probability Theory. After several years pursuing a traditional research-oriented academic career, he decided his interests resided in education and pedagogy. He has taught over 30 different courses in the areas of mathematics and statistics and has developed a great enthusiasm for the adoption of active learning and evidence-based teaching methods. He is a past president of the Statistical Society of Canada’s Education Section and has also served on the education committee.
SURVEY METHODS SECTION EXECUTIVE
(Three-year terms; 2020–23)
PRESIDENT-ELECT
(President, 2021–22; Past President, 2022–23)
Jean-François Beaumont, Statistics Canada
Jean-François is currently chief of the Statistical Research and Innovation Section at Statistics Canada. He studied at Laval University from 1989 to 1996 where he obtained a Baccalaureate in Actuarial Science, a Certificate in Computer Science and a Master in Statistics. He has been working at Statistics Canada ever since. Small area estimation, statistical data integration, robust estimation and bootstrap variance estimation for finite populations are his current research topics of interest. Jean-François also served as the secretary of the Survey Methods Section of the Statistical Society of Canada from 2005 to 2007 and chaired the scientific committee of Statistics Canada’s 2014 International Methodology Symposium.
