In compliance with SSC Operating Policies, the SSC Election Committee is publishing a list of candidates for positions on the Executive and Board of Directors that will become vacant on July 1, 2022. In addition, candidates for positions on the Executives of the Sections, and for positions on the Accreditation and Accreditation Appeals Committees are also provided. The biographical sketches for all candidates are included. Electronic voting will commence in late April 2022.
MEMBERS OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
(Three-year terms; 2022-2025)
President-Elect
[President, 2023–24; Past President, 2024–25]
Shirley Mills, Carleton University
Shirley Mills is a professor of mathematics & statistics at Carleton U. (1983- ) and Executive Director of the Statistical Society of Canada (2011- ). She is a graduate of U. Alberta (PhD) and U. Manitoba (B.Sc.(Dbl.Hon.), M.Sc., Sec. Ed. Cert.) and has been a professor in universities in Manitoba, Alberta, and Ontario as well as working as an actuary for Great West Life. She has supervised over 100 graduate students and been recognized for teaching excellence at all three universities at which she has worked. In addition to teaching, research, and consulting, she is the Faculty of Science Graduate Co-op Advisor at Carleton University. She founded and was Director of the Statistical Consulting Centre at Carleton (1987-1994). Trained as a mathematical statistician, consulting led her to applied statistics and data science, with extensive collaborations funded by all three granting councils as well as government and industry. Research interests include privacy-preserving classification methods, study of anomalous cyber events, statistical analysis of complex networks, and sports analytics. Shirley co-leads the Fields-Carleton Centre for Quantitative Analysis and Modelling (CQAM) Lab for Anomalous Event Detection, Modelling and Prediction. She has co-organized the Ottawa Hockey Analytics Conference since 2015 and the Big Data Cup since 2021. Shirley received the Distinguished Service Award from the SSC in 2015, was named the SSC Isobel Loutit Lecturer in 2017, received the 2018 Science Impact Award from the Faculty of Science at Carleton U for outstanding contributions in research, teaching, and service, and the 2019 Honoured Alumni of the Year from U. Manitoba Dept. of Statistics. She served on the Task Force on Data Science of the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI) and the Accreditation Task Force of SSC. She has served on many SSC committees, co-chaired the SSC 2021 Virtual Organizing Committee and currently co-chairs the 2022 version. She was organizer and is Treasurer of the Data Science and Analytics Section of SSC, served as Secretary and President of the Business and Industrial Statistics Section, Executive Secretary of the SSC for two terms, President of the Statistical Society of Ottawa, chair of the COPSS Elizabeth L. Scott Committee, chair of the Canadian Caucus for Women in Statistics, a founder and Treasurer of the Statistical Association of Manitoba, President of the Carleton University Academic Staff Association, Treasurer of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the elected representative of the Science Faculty to the Senate of Carleton, the elected representative of the Senate to the Board of Governors of Carleton University, and as President of her Community Association in Ottawa.
Public Relations Officer
Rhonda J. Rosychuk, University of Alberta
Rhonda is a Full Professor and SSC and ASA accredited Professional Statistician in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Alberta. Her research activities include statistical methods development, epidemiological studies, and collaboration/consultation with clinical colleagues. She has served on various SSC entities including the Board of Directors, Accreditation Committee, 2013 Annual Meeting Local Arrangements Committee, Elections Committees for the SSC and the Biostatistics Section, Committee on Women in Statistics, and Student Research Presentations Awards Committee.
REGIONAL REPRESENTATIVES ON THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
(Two-year terms)
ATLANTIC PROVINCES
(One to be elected)
Tess Astatkie, Dalhousie University
Tess Astatkie is a Professor of Statistics at the Faculty of Agriculture 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 Ph.D. in Statistics from Queen's University. Tess conducts independent and collaborative research in several areas of statistics including regression analysis, and design and analysis of experiments. Dr. Astatkie collaborated with several researchers in 27 countries who specialize in agriculture, food processing, human nutrition, and post-harvest management. Manuscripts from these collaborations were published in over 90 different journals. He also provides statistical consulting service to the faculty members and graduate students of Dalhousie Agricultural Campus. Tess has been a member of SSC and ASA for more than 29 years and served on the Accreditation Committee of SSC from 2010 to 2014 and currently he is serving as the chair of the Accreditation Committee of ASA.
J. Concepción Loredo-Osti, Memorial University
Dr. Loredo-Osti is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Memorial University. He completed his Ph.D. in statistics from Dalhousie University (1999), postdoctoral scholar and research associate at McGill University for six years. In 2005 he joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of Memorial University.
Dr Loredo-Osti’s research interests are in population genetics and genetic epidemiology, statistical inference, applied stochastic processes, in particular, extreme and/or rare events and alpha-stable processes. In the recent couple of years his work has focused on stochastic processes applied to modelling of Covid-19. Dr Loredo-Osti currently holds the positions head of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and chair of the Data Science Programme at Memorial University.
Since 2014, Dr. Loredo-Osti is a SNI-Conacyt National Researcher Level II (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Mexico).
QUEBEC
(Two to be elected)
Yogendra P. Chaubey, Concordia University
Yogendra P. Chaubey holds the position of Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. He served the Department of Mathematics & Statistics as Chair during 2005-20014 and 2016-17. His current area of research is non-parametric functional estimation that is funded by a discovery grant from NSERC. He has been quite active in promoting Statistics through membership in various capacities of several statistical associations: Secretary, Montreal Chapter of American Statistical Association, 1983-1984; 1st Vice President, Montreal Chapter of American Statistical Association, 1984- 85; President, Statistical Society of Montreal, 2000-2001; SSC Board Member (Québec Rep) 2002-04; 2004-06; 2011-12; Vice President, Forum for Interdisciplinary Mathematics (FIM) 2005; Editor, the SSC Liaison, 2004-06; Member, Committee on Career Development, American Statistical Association, 2005-2007. He has served as an organizer of several academic sessions for several scholarly conferences. The decennial conference held at Concordia University in 1991, 2001, 2011 and most recently in July 2021, that were organized under his supervision, may be specially highlighted. He has also served on the Board of Directors of CANSSI during 2015-16 and is currently serving as the Regional Director of CANSSI-Québec.
Celia Greenwood, McGill University
Celia Greenwood, P.Stat., is Senior Investigator at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research in Montreal, and James McGill Professor. She completed her PhD in 1998 at the University of Toronto (BSc McGill, MMath U. Waterloo) and her area of research is statistical methodology for genetics, genomics and high dimensional data. She is currently the Graduate Program Director of the interdisciplinary PhD program in Quantitative Life Sciences at McGill University. She is a past President of the International Genetic Epidemiology Society, and co-Director of the Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics and Mental Health.
Mireille Schnitzer, University of Montreal
Mireille Schnitzer is an Associate Professor at Université de Montréal where she holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Causal Inference and Machine Learning in Health Science. She is also an adjunct professor at McGill University in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health and a member of the Statistics Laboratory of the Centre de recherche mathématiques. Mireille’s research interests include causal inference in complex longitudinal structures with a focus on targeted learning and the incorporation of machine learning methods.
Mireille received her PhD in Biostatistics from McGill University in 2012 and in 2013 was a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health. She then joined the Université de Montréal as an assistant professor in 2014 and was promoted to associate professor in 2019. Mireille holds funding as principal investigator from NSERC and CIHR. Active in the SSC, Mireille served as a student representative for the Biostatistics Section (2011-2013), organized and chaired the first two Canadian Statistics Student Conferences (2012-2013) and was a member of the Student and Recent Graduate Committee (2013-2014), a member then chair of the Committee on Membership (2014-2017), a member then chair of the Women in Statistics Committee (2017-2018), a member of the Respectful SSC committee (2018-2019), and a member of the Elizabeth L. Scott COPSS committee as the SSC representative (2019-). She has also served on committees at CANSSI and The Society for Causal Inference and chaired the Atlantic Causal Inference Conference organizing committee in 2019.
ONTARIO
(Two to be elected)
Judy-Anne Chapman, (Retired) Queen’s University
Judy-Anne organized the SSC Biostatistics Section, was Public Relations Officer (1992-96), President of Southern Ontario Regional Association, chaired the Canadian Caucus for Women in Statistics and chaired the Interim Accreditation Implementation Committee and the Initial Accreditation Committee. She helped set-up ASA Accreditation, belonging to the ASA Task Force, Ad Hoc Committee, Implementation Committee, and Accreditation Committee followed by being SSC Member of the International Accreditation Committee (ASA, RSS, SSAI, SSC; 2011-14). Recently, she served as a member of the SSC Membership Committee, chaired the SSC Accreditation Task Force, and is currently a member of the Accreditation Appeals Committee, Accreditation Services Committee/Interim A.Stat. Mentoring Facilitator, and SSC Information Technology Committee. She continues transdisciplinary breast cancer research. Judy-Anne would be pleased to serve on the SSC Board as a Regional Representative.
Edward Chen, (Retired) Statistics Canada
Edward J. Chen, P.Stat., was employed as a mathematical statistician (MA) at Statistics Canada from 1986 to his retirement in 2021. He was a chief of Methodology and devoted his passion and energy to two of the most important programs at Statistics Canada, namely the Census of Population and the Canadian Labour Force Survey. Edward led 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 the Canadian Labour Force Survey and other household survey programs at Statistics Canada. Edward is very active in the statistical and local communities. He served two terms as SSC Treasurer from 2005 to 2009. 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 a current SSC Board member and is seeking for another two year term. Edward also served in many capacities for the SSC including as the current Chair of the SSC Fundraising Committee, as the associate editor for Liaison for 12 years and many other SSC committees. Previously, Edward was Treasurer of the Statistical Society of Ottawa from 1999 to 2003 and Treasurer of other local organizations.
Tony Panzarella, University of Toronto
Tony is an Assistant Professor and MSc Program Director in the Division of Biostatistics, DLSPH. He is the President of the Southern Ontario Regional Association of the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) and Ontario Chapter of the American Statistical Association. He was the manager of the Department of Biostatistics at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre for 20 years and a biostatistician within that group for over 32 years. Tony is professionally accredited as a statistician by the SSC.
Zilin Wang, Wilfrid Laurier University
Zilin Wang is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Wilfrid Laurier University. She received her PhD degree in Statistics from the University of Western Ontario in 2004. Her research areas include survey sampling, environmental statistics, resampling techniques, and statistical modelling in finance. She served as the Treasurer (2004-2013) and President (2010-2013) of ASA Chapter of the Southern Ontario Regional Association. She served as the President and Past President of the Survey Methods Section of the Statistical Society of Canada from 2020 to 2022.
MANITOBA–SASKATCHEWAN–NORTHWEST TERRITORIES–NUNAVUT
(One to be elected)
Mahmoud Torabi, University of Manitoba
Mahmoud Torabi received his PhD in Statistics from Carleton University. His PhD thesis research focused on Small Area Estimation. He was awarded the University Medal for the Best Doctoral Dissertation at Carleton. He then received a full-time fellowship award from University of Alberta, awarded by Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR), to investigate the impact of various health research topics in the province of Alberta. Dr. Torabi joined the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba in July 2010 as a full-time Assistant Professor of Biostatistics. He was promoted to the Associate Professor in 2014 and to Professor in 2020. He is also an adjunct Professor in the Department of Statistics. He has served the Statistical Society of Canada in various capacities and was President of the Survey Methods Section in 2018.
Chandima Karunanayake, Canadian Centre for Health and Safety in Agriculture
Chandima Karunanayake is a Biostatistician and works at the Canadian Centre for Health and Safety in Agriculture as a Professional Research Associate. Chandima graduated in Statistics from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1997. She obtained her Master of Applied Statistics degrees from University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka (2001) and University of Hasselt, Belgium (2002). Also, she obtained her Masters in Biostatistics degree from University of Hasselt, Belgium in 2002. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy degree specializing in Applied Statistics from University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon in 2007. She obtained the Professional Statistician (P. Stat.) designation from Statistical Society of Canada in June 2009. Her work has encompassed 120 scientific publications with Google scholar h index of 22. Currently, she is mainly involved with projects conducted by the Centre and assists with statistical analysis (applied linear models and longitudinal analysis) and manuscript preparation for several research groups. She is involved with the RaDAR data team, Saskatchewan Rural Health Study team, First Nations Lung Health team and First Nations Sleep Health team.
ALBERTA–BRITISH COLUMBIA–YUKON
(One to be elected)
Bei Jiang, University of Alberta
Bei Jiang is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences of the University of Alberta. She received her PhD in Biostatistics in 2014 from University of Michigan. Prior to joining the University of Alberta in 2015 as an Assistant Professor, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Biostatistics at Columbia University from 2014 to 2015. Her main research interests focus on statistical integration of multi-source and multi-modal data, and statistical disclosure control and learning methods for privacy protection. She has also worked closely with collaborators in women’s health, mental health, neurology, and industry partners to apply cutting-edge statistical learning methods to real-world applications. She has served as a judge for SSC case studies in data analysis poster competition in 2019 and is currently serving as a member of the SSC Student Research Award Committee (2021-2024).
Wanhua Su, MacEwan University
Wanhua Su is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at MacEwan University. She received a BSc in Applied Mathematics from East China Normal University, a MSc in Statistics from the National University of Singapore, and a PhD in Statistics from the University of Waterloo. Wanhua’s research interests are in data mining, biostatistics, and Bayesian statistics. She is a member of the SSC Statistical Education Section and the Biostatics Section. Wanhua was a member of the SSC Women in Statistics Committee and is currently Treasurer for the Statistical Education Section.
SECTION EXECUTIVES
ACTUARIAL SCIENCE SECTION EXECUTIVE
(Three-year terms)
President-Elect
[President, 2023-24; Past President, 2024–25]
Alexandru Badescu, University of Calgary
Alexandru Badescu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Calgary since 2007. During 2013-2015 he was Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at University of Quebec in Montreal. Alexandru studied Mathematics at the University of Bucharest and Economics at Bucharest University of Economic Studies. He received his PhD in Statistics from Western University in 2007. His research interests cover a wide range of topics in actuarial science, financial mathematics, and econometrics. Alexandru published his work in peer-reviewed journals in these fields including the European Journal of Operational Research, Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of Financial Econometrics, North American Actuarial Journal and Quantitative Finance. He has been a member of the Committee on Knowledge Extension Research at the Society of Actuaries since 2014.
Secretary
Mélina Mailhot, Concordia University
Mélina Mailhot is Associate Professor in Actuarial Science in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Concordia University, is also an Associate of the Society of Actuaries and Associate of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries. Mélina has collaborated with provincial and federal insurance/financial regulators for capital requirements and pricing regulations and has received awards from the Society of Actuaries, Canadian Institute of Actuaries and CANSSI for her academic work.
BIOSTATISTICS SECTION EXECUTIVE
(Three-year terms)
President-Elect
[President, 2023-24; Past President, 2024–25]
Jinko Graham, Simon Fraser University
Jinko Graham is a Professor of Statistics at Simon Fraser University. She obtained an MSc in Statistics from University of British Columbia and a PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Washington. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the US National Institute of Statistical Sciences and North Carolina State University, she joined the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at Simon Fraser University and has been there ever since. Her research focuses on statistical genetics and biostatistics. She is particularly interested in how variation in the DNA sequences of individuals reflects their underlying genealogical relationships. These relationships can tell us about our ancestry and origins. They can also tell us about our predisposition to inherited traits, and so are of use in mapping the genomic location of DNA variants that contribute to diseases. She has served the SSC as an Alberta-British Columbia-Yukon representative (2018–ongoing), and on the Student Travel Grants Committee (2017-2020).
Secretary
Marie-Pierre Sylvestre, University of Montreal
Marie-Pierre Sylvestre is Associate Professor in Biostatistics at the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal and a Research Scientist at the Innovation Hub of the CHUM research centre. She completed her PhD in biostatistics at McGill University in 2008 and postdoctoral studies at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute. She founded the Biostatistics Consultation Services at the CHUM Research Centre in 2010 and led its activities until September 2013. She now holds a Junior II Salary Award from the Fond de recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQS) for her program of research on methods for longitudinal data. Her research interests include trajectory analysis, mediation models and the development of prognostic tools. She has authored both methodological and substantive publications with a focus on substance use in youth. She published 3 R packages for the flexible simulation and modelling of complex longitudinal data, including the permutational algorithm (PermAlgo), the weighted cumulative exposure model (WCE), and a 3-step approach to trajectory analysis (traj). She is one of the founding members of the Coalition for Early Life course studies supporting Public Health Intervention and Evaluation (celphie.ca) and the Biostatistics Advisor for the Montreal Heart Institute Scientific Evaluation Committee.
BUSINESS AND INDUSTRIAL STATISTICS SECTION EXECUTIVE
(Three-year terms)
President-Elect
[President, 2023-24; Past President, 2024–25]
Farouk Nathoo, University of Victoria
Farouk Nathoo is a Professor and Tier II Canada Research Chair in Biostatistics for Spatial and High-Dimensional Data in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Victoria. Nathoo received his B.Sc. (Combined Honors in Mathematics and Statistics) from the University of British Columbia in 1998 where he received the Nash Medal upon graduation. He obtained his M.Math degree from the University of Waterloo in 2000, began his Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University in 2001, obtaining the degree in 2006. He began a tenure track position at the University of Victoria the same year, was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2011, was awarded a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in 2013 (renewed in 2018) and promoted to full professor in 2020.
Nathoo currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI) and has served on the NSERC Mathematics and Statistics Evaluation Group (EG 1508) grant panel (2016-2019). He is an Associate Editor for the Canadian Journal of Statistics, a Topic Editor for Entropy, has co-edited a special issue of Statistical Methods in Medical Research on the topic of statistics for neuroimaging, has co-edited a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Statistics on the topic of Neuroimaging Data Analysis and co-edited two special issues for Entropy on Big Data Analytics and Information Science for Business and Biomedical Applications. Nathoo was a co-leader of the CANSSI Collaborative Research Team: "Joint Analysis of Neuroimaging Data: High-dimensional Problems, Spatio-Temporal Models and Computation" (2016 - 2019).
His area of research has emphasis on the development of statistical methods for the analysis of neuroimaging data, Bayesian methods, spatial and spatiotemporal statistics and statistical modeling. On these and other topics he has written over 45 papers with collaborators and trainees and has given over 70 invited talks at Canadian and international venues.
Secretary
Carolyn Augusta, University of Saskatchewan
Carolyn Augusta teaches statistics to over 1,000 undergraduate students per year. She received her BMath in Honours Statistics (French Minor) in 2012 from the University of Waterloo. She completed a Master’s then a PhD in applied statistics with a focus on epidemiology and deep learning from the University of Guelph under the supervision of Drs. Graham Taylor and Rob Deardon in 2020. In 2019 she was appointed to the faculty of the Edwards School of Business at the University of Saskatchewan, where she also serves on the University Council. Carolyn is a past member of the Board of Governors and the University of Guelph Senate. Her present research interests include deep learning methods to solve problems in epidemiology, both in human medicine and in the agribusiness sector.
DATA SCIENCE AND ANALYTICS SECTION EXECUTIVE
(Three-year term)
President-Elect
[President, 2023-24; Past President, 2024–25]
Matthew Greenberg, University of Calgary
Matthew Greenberg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Calgary, where he has been employed since 2008. He received his 2006 PhD in algorithmic and algebraic number theory and spent the next decade as an active researcher in that field. Over the last five years, his interests and focus shifted to statistics, data science, and machine learning with an emphasis on applications to genomic data. He has close research collaborations with colleagues in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. He helped establish and is currently co-director of the professional and master’s programs in data science and analytics at the University of Calgary. He is also collaborating with colleagues in the Department of Computer Science to establish an undergraduate major program in data science. He co-developed and co-instructed the data science training curriculum for the PIMS (Pacific Institute for Mathematical Sciences) program Math to Power Industry (M2PI 2022), a workshop for graduate students and postdocs in the mathematical and statistical sciences to gain industry skills needed for success in their careers. He consults actively with industry on topics related to data science and machine learning, having worked with companies like Benevity, Mikata Health, and ATB Financial, and serves as academic supervisor for various MITACS student internships.
PROBABILITY SECTION EXECUTIVE
(Three-year terms)
President-Elect
[President, 2023-24; Past President, 2024–25]
Thomas S. Salisbury, York University
Thomas S. Salisbury received his BSc in 1979 from McGill University, and his PhD in mathematics in 1983 from the University of British Columbia. After a postdoctoral position at Purdue University, he moved to York University, in whose Department of Mathematics and Statistics he is a Professor and former department chair. His research area is probability theory and stochastic processes, including applications of Brownian motion to actuarial finance. He has been a co-editor-in-chief of the Canadian Mathematical Bulletin and an associate editor of Probability Theory and Related Fields, Potential Analysis, and the Canadian Journal of Statistics. He is a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS), and of the Fields Institute, and won the CMS's Graham Wright award in 2015. He teaches financial engineering at York, was director of analytics at Quantitative Wealth Management Analytics group (QWeMA) prior to the latter's acquisition by CANNEX and led the Finsurance project at MITACS-MPRIME. He chaired the task force that initiated the 2007 revision of the Ontario grade 12 curriculum, and subsequently served on the Ontario Minister of Education's curriculum council. He has served terms as President of the Canadian Mathematical Society and as Deputy Director of the Fields Institute. His current research is supported by NSERC.
Secretary
François Marshall, Boston University
François Marshall is a postdoctoral associate at Boston University, in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and under the supervision of Prof. Mark Kramer (Neurodata and Modeling). He conducts time-series and spectral analyses for the temporal responses of electrodes for human studies of epileptic seizures. The analyses are designed to improve current understanding of the spatiotemporal dynamics of human seizures. In an ongoing collaboration with Queen’s University Mathematics and Statistics, Mr. Marshall is also working on developing methods for understanding nonlinearity in physical stochastic processes that exhibit periodicity – to this end, he is developing novel time-series models and diagnostic metrics for coherence analyses. Additionally, he is working on the development of statistical neuron spike-sorting algorithms with Mr. Pranavan Thirunavukkarasu (M.Sc., York University) and Prof. Martin Paré (Visual Information Processing Laboratory, Queen’s University). In 2020, he received his PhD in Applied Mathematics at Queen’s University, and since then he has been working in his current position with Boston University (currently remotely from Ottawa). A member of SSC since 2015, he was secretary for the 2018 CSSC organizing committee, and his roles currently for the SARGC (2021-2023) are as follows: secretary of the SARGC; and a member of the SARGC EDI subcommittee (newly initiated this year by the SARGC Chair, Steve Ferreira Guerra). During the 2017-2018 academic year, Mr. Marshall was a member of the Graduate Committee of Mathematics and Statistics at Queen’s University. He received the “Probability Section Student Research Presentation Award” in the 2019 SSC annual meeting, and in 2019 he taught the fourth-year/graduate course, “STAT 464/864: Time-series Analysis”, as a teaching fellow in Mathematics and Statistics at Queen’s University.
STATISTICAL EDUCATION SECTION EXECUTIVE
(Three-year terms)
President-Elect
[President, 2023-24; Past President, 2024–25]
Yildiz Yilmaz, Memorial University
Yildiz Yilmaz is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Memorial University. After she obtained her Ph.D. degree in Statistics from the University of Waterloo, she held a post-doctoral researcher position in biostatistics at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital and University of Toronto. She joined Memorial University as an assistant professor in 2013. Her research interests include development and application of statistical methods in biomedicine, epidemiology and human genetics. Yildiz teaches undergraduate and graduate courses for Statistics programs and has taught graduate courses for the Clinical Epidemiology program and graduate-level lectures for the Human Genetics program at Memorial University. She has supervised students at each level of post-doctoral, Ph.D., M.Sc. and B.Sc. and in each of the Statistics and Human Genetics programs. Yildiz has been serving as the Deputy Head of Statistics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Memorial University since September 2020.
Secretary
Samantha-Jo Caetano, University of Toronto
Samantha-Jo (Sam) Caetano is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Toronto (UofT). Prior to joining UofT Sam completed her MSc and PhD at McMaster University (Hamilton, Canada), working on Model Validation in Survival Analysis under the supervision of Dr. Gregory Pond. While completing her graduate studies Sam taught multiple large, undergraduate courses both at McMaster and UofT. Here she realized her passion lie in teaching and education. Currently, Sam’s main area of research is Statistics Education. She is involved in multiple ongoing class-based research projects, is Chair of the Census at School Committee, and is on the organizing committee of DataFest at UofT. In line with this Sam enjoys outreach and mentorship roles, specifically those focused on outreach to under-represented groups in statistics. Sam also is an amateur unicyclist and loves spending time with her two large (+160lb) Newfoundland dogs (Dory and Schooner)!
SURVEY METHODS SECTION EXECUTIVE
President-Elect
(Three-year term; 2022–25)
[President, 2023-24; Past President, 2024–25]
Éric Gagnon, Institut de la statistique du Québec
Éric is Director of the Methodology Department at the Institut de la statistique du Québec (ISQ). Éric holds a bachelor's degree in statistics which he completed at Laval University in 1996. Subsequently, he completed his master's studies in statistics at the same institution in 1999. His thesis subject concerns the characterization and classification of astronomical objects using artificial neural networks, Around the same time, Eric began his career as a survey methodologist at Statistics Canada in 1997. At that time, Eric had the opportunity to work on the imputation of missing data as well as on statistical confidentiality. In 2000, Éric left the federal scene to take up a position at the provincial statistical agency of Quebec, the ISQ. Survey methods are still at the heart of his work. Over the years, he also developed an interest in small area estimation methods. In 2011, he became coordinator of business survey methods and then director in 2017.
Treasurer
(Two-year term; 2022–24)
Elisabeth Neusy, Statistics Canada
Elisabeth Neusy is a senior methodologist in the Social Statistics Methods Division at Statistics Canada. She has worked for more than 25 years at the agency and has a broad range of experience in survey methodology. She is interested in data quality and in confidence interval methods for complex survey data. She received her Bachelor of Science Honours in Mathematics-Science from the University of Ottawa.
ACCREDITATION PROGRAM COMMITTEES
(Three-year terms; 2022–2025)
Accreditation Committee
(Four to be elected)
David Bellhouse, (Retired) University of Western Ontario
David Bellhouse is Professor Emeritus of Statistics at the University of Western Ontario. He holds a BA and MA from the University of Manitoba and a PhD from the University of Waterloo. His initial research interests were in survey sampling; he published several research articles in this area. He was also involved in a number of consulting projects, typically statistical analyses in legal disputes. Currently, his research interests include the history of probability, statistics, and actuarial science up to and including the nineteenth century. He has published two books related to the history of actuarial science: Abraham De Moivre: Setting the Stage for Classical Probability and Its Applications and Leases for Lives: the Emergence of Actuarial Science in Eighteenth-Century England. Recently, he has completed a biography of the father of statistical graphics, William Playfair. Professor Bellhouse is an Honorary Member of the Statistical Society of Canada, an Honoured Alumnus of the Faculty of Science of the University of Manitoba, an Honorary Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries of the United Kingdom, and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. He has been awarded the Gold Medal for Excellence in Teaching by the University of Western Ontario.
Malcolm Binns, Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest
Malcolm Binns works as a Statistician Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Hospital. He also holds a faculty appointment in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He pursues collaborative biostatistical research embedding statistical thinking into multidisciplinary research in the field of human brain function. He is co-lead of a neuroinformatics and biostatistics core for a research consortium studying neurodegenerative disease with a comprehensive array of data flowing in from neuropsychology, kinesiology, neuroimaging, retinal imaging, and molecular chemistry labs across Ontario. Research interests associated with this work involve dataset arrangement, multivariate outliers, robust methods, feature extraction and selection, and data visualization. Thesis and practicum students under his supervision have primarily been working on problems in high dimensional and multiview data. He has designed and delivered curricula for graduate courses on multipredictor regression modeling for epidemiology students and categorical data modeling for biostatistics students. He has studied at Queen’s University (MSc Statistics 1993) and the University of Toronto (PhD Biostatistics 2007). He has been a member of SSC since 1993 and has held PStat accreditation since 2013.
John Koval, (retired) University of Western Ontario
John Koval is Professor Emeritus (Biostatistics) in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Western Ontario. His research on correlated logistic regression models was funded by NSERC, and he was principal investigator in a 10-year cohort study of psychosocial factors in smoking in adolescents and young adults, funded by the National Cancer Institute of Canada. He has been an SSC member since the early 80's and an accredited member since early in the accreditation program. He was Treasurer of the Biostatistics section from 2000 to 2007, Treasurer of the SSC from 2009 to 2014, Ontario representative from 2014 to 2016, and is currently a member of the Accreditation Committee.
Peter Macdonald, McMaster University
Peter Macdonald is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics & Statistics at McMaster University. He has filled may roles in the SSC from 1979 to the present, including Program Chair 1980, Treasurer 1981-1984, President 1990-1991, and Electronic Communications Manager 2013-2017. He is now a copy editor for the CJS. He received P.Stat. accreditation in 2005 and has served on the Accreditation Appeals Committee 2012-2014 and the Accreditation Committee 2019-2022.
Elmabrok Masaoud, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Elmabrok Masaoud is a Senior Statistician at Canadian Food Inspection Agency. He has BSc degrees in statistics, an MSc in Statistics from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and a PhD in Biostatistics from the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC), University of Prince Edward Island. In addition, he is an adjunct professor of Biostatistics, School of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa and member of Faculty of Graduate and Postgraduate Studies, University of Ottawa. Elmabrok previously served as the President of Graduate Student Association at University of Prince Edward Island (2005-2006) and the Prince Edward Island's representative for the Canadian Federation of Students (2006-2007). Elmabrok consults with data users, processors, and evaluators on study design, sampling, statistical data analyses and reporting. He reviews and appraises the adequacy and validity of applied probability models, sampling and laboratory protocols and claim submissions. His research focuses mainly on the statistical models for observational data, typically extracted from registers of routinely recordings in health including human, animal and food data.
Accreditation Appeals Committee
(Two elected by acclamation)
Cheryl Gibbons, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Cheryl is an Accredited Professional Statistician (P.Stat.) working at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). She is passionate about making data suitable for decision making. At the CFIA, she authored the design and delivery of a national, thin-client management solution to unify the work of statisticians, laboratory analysts and data scientists to publish customized dashboard and reports. Cheryl has worked on some of the most exciting projects within the statistical landscape and delivered solutions for proteomics (human health; Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy), patents (animal vaccines and GMOs) and trade agreements (plant health; WTO). She has led award-winning research within the federal government and private industry. With over 20 years of professional and statistical expertise, Cheryl has led domestic, international, public, private and dozens of virtual multi-disciplinary teams. Cheryl is bilingual; she grew up in the province of Québec speaking both English and French at home. Cheryl is currently a member of the Accreditation Appeals Committee at the Statistical Society of Canada. She holds dual Executive Master of Business of Administration degrees from Queen’s University (Kingston, ON) and Cornell University (Ithaca, NY, USA).
Jill Vandermeerscheen, University of Quebec in Montreal
Jill Vandermeerschen is a professional consultant in research since she obtained her Master’s degree from Université de Montréal in 2009. She currently works as coordinator and statistician for the consulting service of Université du Québec à Montréal. She assists professors and graduate students with their statistical analyses. Since being accredited as P.Stat in 2017, she was involved in the Accreditation Services Committee and the Accreditation Appeals Committee. .