Eric Rancourt, strategic advisor and assistant chief statistician of Statistics Canada, has been elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA).
The ASA Fellow designation has been a significant honour for nearly 100 years. Under ASA bylaws, the Committee on Fellows may elect up to one-third of one percent of the total association membership as Fellows each year. The 2026 class of ASA Fellows honours 46 members for their professional contributions, leadership, and commitment to statistical science.
Eric Rancourt has had a remarkable career at Statistics Canada since 1990. His early work focused on incorporating imputation variance estimation into general estimation procedures at Statistics Canada. His research has since broadened to encompass other key aspects of official statistics enterprise, including the ethical collection and use of data, privacy protection, frameworks for data quality, the dissemination of official statistics, and ways to broaden the scope of official statistics to include non-survey data.
He has served in leadership roles at nearly every level within Statistics Canada, including director general of statistical infrastructure (2016–2018), director general of modern statistical methods and data science (2018–2022), and most recently, assistant chief statistician for strategic data management, methods and analysis, and chief data officer (2023–2026). He has been an important contributor to maintaining the reputation of Statistics Canada as one of the world’s leading government statistical agencies.
Eric has also provided important service and leadership to the broader statistical sciences community. He has served as program chair of International Association of Survey Statisticians, International Association for Official Statistics, Government Statistics Section of ASA, and as chair of the ASA Survey Research Methods Section, among many other roles. He is currently chair of the board of governors of the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI).
The 2026 class of ASA Fellows will be formally recognized at the award ceremony of the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Boston on August 4, 2026.