Executive Committee (Three-year terms)

Mayer Alvo

Mayer Alvo obtained a BSc in mathematics in 1967 and an MSc in statistics in 1968, both from McGill University. He went on to obtain a PhD in mathematical statistics in 1972 from Columbia University. He was a visiting professor at Stanford University during the period 1972-1973. He has been teaching at the University of Ottawa in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics since 1973 and has taught courses at all levels in both mathematics and statistics. He served as Chairman for three mandates. Among his interests in statistics are the areas of nonparametric statistics, sampling and survey methods, experimental designs, spatial methods, environmental statistics and distribution theory. He served as Treasurer for the SSC during the years 2001-2003 and helped to consolidate the finances of the Society. As President, he would be interested in exploring ways to widen the visibility of the Society and secondly to increase the mobility of statisticians through an exchange program.

John Petkau

John Petkau is a Professor in the Department of Statistics at UBC. He received his BSc in 1971 (Manitoba) and his PhD in 1975 (Stanford). Following two years as an Instructor at MIT, he moved to UBC. He is active in the Department’s Statistical Consulting and Research Laboratory and served as Head in 1989-94. His current research interests focus on the design and analysis of clinical studies in multiple sclerosis. He serves on the data safety and monitoring boards for several clinical trials and recently completed his 12th year on the U.S. National MS Society’s International Advisory Committee on Clinical Trials. He has served the SSC as a Regional Representative on the Board of Directors (1982-84, 2003-05), as President of the Biostatistics Section (1996-97), and as a member of committees, including as Chair of the Pierre Robillard Committee (1983-84), the Program Committee for the 1988 Annual Meeting, the Awards Committee (1990-91), the Research Committee (1999-2002), and the Ad-Hoc Committee on New Awards (2005-06). He also served as Chair of the NSERC Statistical Sciences 1989-90 GSC and 2000-02 Reallocations Exercise Steering Committee. If elected, he will do his best to continue the strong tradition of excellent leadership established by previous Presidents.

Publications Officer (by acclamation) 

Jean-François Plante

Jean-François Plante is an Assistant Professor at HEC Montréal since 2009. Recently appointed Chair of the Public Relations Committee on a temporary basis, this regular attendee of the SSC annual meeting also served on the Bilingualism Committee from 2009 to 2012. On a regional basis, he is the Director of Communications for the Association des statisticiennes et statisticiens du Québec since 2010. Jean-François completed his Master’s studies at Laval University (2000-2002), his PhD at the University of British Columbia (2002-2007) and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto (2007-2009). He served the scientific community by regularly organizing seminars and conferences in the different places where he worked and studied. Living in three major Canadian research centres allowed him to appreciate the diversity of the Canadian statistical community. His research interests include the modelling of dependence and weighted inference.

Regional Representatives on the Board of Directors (Two-year terms)

Regional representative from Atlantic Provinces (One to be elected)

Noel Cadigan

Noel Cadigan is a quantitative fisheries scientist at the Centre for Fisheries Ecosystems Research of the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland. He received a PhD in statistics in 1999 from the University of Waterloo, a MA.S in 1993 and a BSc in 1990 from Memorial University. He worked with Fisheries and Oceans Canada at the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Center in Newfoundland from 1990- 2011. He has previously served the SSC as an Atlantic representative on the Board of the SSC in 2001, a member of the Election Committee in 2004, and as Secretary of the Biostatistics Section during 2001-2006. His main research interests are statistical methods for fish stock assessment and sustainable fisheries.

Ying Zhang

Ying Zhang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics and is the Director of the Statistical Consulting Centre at Acadia University. She received her MSc and PhD in Statistics from the University of Western Ontario. She managed the Statistical Laboratory of the University of Western Ontario from 2001 to 2004. Ying’s main areas of interest include time series analysis and consulting-oriented applied statistics.

Regional representatives from Québec (Two to be elected) 

Pierre-Jérôme Bergeron

Pierre-Jérôme Bergeron has been a faculty member in the Mathematics and Statistics department of the University of Ottawa since 2008. Prior to working in the federal capital, he received a MSc and PhD in statistics from McGill University before joining the department of Statistics and Actuarial Science in Waterloo as a post-doctoral fellow. He has been in the executive committee of the Statistical Society of Ottawa since 2009 and has spearheaded many events there for the local statistical community. He is involved in a number of projects in Ottawa and elsewhere in Canada, both in knowledge translation, collaborations between medical, governmental, industrial and academic entities regarding methodological developments in statistics and their dissemination across multiple disciplines. His main area of research is biostatistics, particularly survival analysis and analysis of recurrent event data.

Anne-Sophie Charest

Anne-Sophie Charest is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Université Laval. She received a BSc in Probability and Statistics from McGill University (2007) and an MSc (2008) and PhD (2012) in Statistics from Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focusses on confidentiality protection for statistical data. During her graduate studies, Anne-Sophie served on the departmental Student Advisory Committee (2009-2012); her initiatives include a peer mentoring program and a new series of professional lectures for graduate students. She was also a student representative to the Pittsburgh Chapter of the ASA (2009-2012), has been involved with Statistics Without Borders and participated in several other outreach projects. Anne-Sophie received the 2012 Carnegie Mellon Graduate Student Service Award for her participation both on campus and in the larger academic community. She is now looking forward to getting involved with the Canadian statistical community.

Yogendra Chaubey

Yogendra P. Chaubey is Professor and Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Concordia University, Montreal. He has an M. Stat. degree from the Indian Statistical institute (1972) and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester (1976). He has been quite active in promoting Statistics through membership in various capacities of several statistical associations: Secretary and 1st Vice President, Montreal Chapter of the American Statistical Association; President, Statistical Society of Montreal; Vice President, Forum for Interdisciplinary Mathematics (FIM); Member, Committee on Career Development, American Statistical Association; Member of the Board of Directors of SSC, 2002-04, 2011-13. He was the Editor of Liaison, 2004-06. He has been an organizer of several academic sessions for various scholarly conferences, notably those held at Concordia University in 1991, 2001 and 2011. He is an elected member of International Statistical Institute since 2005.

Geneviève Lefebvre

Geneviève Lefebvre is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Université du Québec à Montréal since 2008. Geneviève obtained her MSc in statistics from the Université de Montréal. She received her PhD in statistics from McGill University in 2007 and completed her studies with a postdoctoral training at the University of British-Columbia. She has served as regional representative for Quebec the past two years and is a member of the SSC New Investigators Committee since 2008. Her main research interests are in computational statistics and biostatistics, with an emphasis on applied methodology.

Regional representatives from Ontario (Two to be elected) 

Fernando Camacho

Fernando Camancho obtained BSc degrees in mathematics and electrical engineering from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia, and MSc and PhD degrees in statistics from the University of Western Ontario. Fernando has over 25 years of consulting experience in the areas of engineering, clinical research and business. He currently works as an independent consultant statistician in Toronto as Principal of DAMOS Inc., where he is responsible for identifying projects, propose solutions, negotiate contracts and manage projects. He collaborates with the analysis of data, the interpretation and reporting of results, the implementation of models, the design of experiments and in-field studies, and the understanding of statistical techniques. Fernando also enjoys lecturing at the University of Waterloo. Fernando has served in the Statistical Society of Canada as President of the Business and Industrial Statistical Section (BISS) and on several occasions as member of the Accreditation Committee.

Bingshu Chen

Bingshu Chen is an Assistant Professor, Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario. He is also a senior biostatistician at the NCIC Clinical Trials Group. He received his BSc from Beijing Normal University and MSc from Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China. Dr. Chen completed his PhD in biostatistics at the University of Waterloo, then worked at the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, USA, first as a Postdoctoral Fellow and then as a Research Fellow. He was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Concordia University from 2007 to 2008. His research interests are survival analysis, statistical computation, design and analysis of clinical trials and cancer epidemiology. 

Derrick Gray

Derrick Gray, P.Stat., is the Director, Research at BBM Canada. BBM provides broadcast measurement and consumer behavior data as well as industry-leading intelligence to broadcasters, advertisers and agencies. In this role, Derrick oversees the Statistical Research and Sample Design teams working on BBM Canada’s syndicated services. Derrick received his MSc degree in Statistics from the University of Toronto and his BSc degree in Mathematical Sciences (Statistics) from the University of Toronto at Scarborough. Derrick brings previous board experience with other associations having served three terms on the Board of Directors and one term as Treasurer of the Broadcast Research Council (BRC). He is also an active member with the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA) serving on both the Research and Development Committee and the Statisticians Working Group.

Georges Monette

Georges Monette is an Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at York University in Toronto. He received his BSc (Honours Mathematics) from Western in 1974, and his PhD at the University of Toronto in 1980. He consults in many areas of statistical application, has given expert testimony on longitudinal data analysis, and teaches graduate courses on statistical consulting and applied statistics. He has been coordinator of York’s Statistical Consulting Service and Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. He organizes and teaches workshops in longitudinal data analysis. He is a current member of the Accreditation Committee and past President of the Southern Ontario Regional Association of the SSC. His current interests include statistical visualization and longitudinal data analysis. He works to promote the public awareness of statistics by giving talks and workshops on statistical concepts to educators and to the public. He has been a P.Stat. since 2005.

Regional representative from Manitoba-Saskatchewan-N.W.T.-Nunavit (One to be elected)

Alexandre Leblanc

Alexandre Leblanc obtained his PhD in Statistics from the Université de Montréal. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Manitoba, which he joined in 2003. His research interests are mainly focused on nonparametric function estimation using frequentist and Bayesian methods, including adaptive methods, asymptotic properties and limit laws, and robustness. He has been a member of the SSC for twelve years, serving on many of its committees: the Committee on Bilingualism (2004- 7) and the Travel Awards Committee for the annual meetings (2006-7), the Program Committee (since 2011) and the Research Committee (since 2011). He has already been a regional representative (elected) on the SSC board for the region (2009-11) and was Program Chair for the 2012 annual meeting of the Society in Guelph. Finally, he is currently involved in the creation of the Canadian Institute of Statistical Sciences (CANSSI) in his role of regional associate director representing Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Hyun (June) Lim

Hyun J. Lim is a Professor of the Department of Community Health & Epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan. She is also the Director of the Clinical Research Unit at the University. June obtained an MSc. Degree in Mathematics and an MSc Degree in Statistics from Michigan State University. She obtained a PhD degree in Biostatistics from Case Western Reserve University. Her main research interests are in survival analysis, longitudinal data analysis, and design of clinical trials. Her interest also includes infectious disease, especially on HIV/AIDS and TB studies. She has collaborated with clinical research investigators and organizations in Canada and USA and has published numerous papers on statistical methodologies and its application to health science. At the end of June, she will complete a 2-year term as a Regional Representative on the SSC Board of Directors. 

Regional representative from Alberta-British Columbia-Yukon (One to be elected)

Lawrence McCandless

Lawrence McCandless is a tenure-track assistant professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and an associate member of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Sciences. He completed a PhD in statistics in 2007 at the University of British Columbia and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Imperial College London. Dr. McCandless’s research interests include epidemiology, meta-analysis and Bayesian statistics.

Nathaniel Newlands

Nathaniel K. Newlands is a Research Scientist in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of British Columbia. He is a member of SSC and was on an Advisory Group for the Canadian Statistical Institute Development Committee. He completed a BSc in Physics and Mathematics (Univ. of Guelph), a MSc in Astrophysics (University of Calgary) and PhD.in Resource Management and Environmental Studies (University of British Columbia). His research focuses on statistical climatology, crop forecasting, ecosystem risk assessment and sustainable development modeling and resource management decision-support.