By Jane R. Elgass
The addition of three new senior faculty members to the Department of Statistics this fall will further strengthen its teaching and research in applied statistics, and create new opportunities for interdisciplinary work with other
U-M units.
The new faculty members are Roderick J.A. Little, professor of statistics, and Vijayan N. Nair and C.F. Jeff Wu, both professors of statistics with tenure.
“These three prominent statisticians with international reputations will greatly strengthen the discipline of statistics on campus, particularly in the area of applications,” says department chair Robb J. Muirhead.
Nair and Wu hold joint appointments with the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering, “an incredibly important link with engineering for us,” he adds.
Muirhead explains that much is being done by his unit “to build relationships between our small unit and other, larger ones on campus.”
He notes that some long-time faculty have appointments in other units, but that the statistics appointment is secondary. “These are the first [joint appointments] with their home in statistics, opening the possibility of developing ties from us to them, rather than from them to us, which has been the case in the past.”
Muirhead says the College of Engineering is exploring the possibility of integrating statistics into its curriculum, and that “it’s important that we be involved.”
Engineering processes are now very complex, Muirhead notes, and “it is vital that engineers use factual data rather than simply relying on engineering judgment. They have to learn how to measure processes and design complex industrial experiments. It is vital,” he says, “that engineering schools develop a solid curriculum in statistics and, with Nair and Wu in I&OE, the department expects to be able to help in this respect,” he states.
Noting that the University is located in an industrial center, Muirhead says that “with the addition of Nair and Wu we are poised to play an important role in understanding statistical problems in local industry, such as the auto, electronics and pharmaceutical industries, and in making contributions to their solution. Both Nair and Wu,” he adds, “are interested in helping orient our curriculum toward the types of design and analysis problems that occur in industry.”
“In the past,” Muirhead explains, “the department has not been aggressive in establishing links with local industry. Nair and Wu will change this, and we expect that, as our ties develop, so will our opportunities for funding graduate students through fellowships and internships.
Little, who also is professor of biostatistics with tenure and chair of the Department of Biostatistics, is interested in survey sampling work done at the Institute for Social Research, which Muirhead hopes will lead to stronger ties with the unit.
Little joined the U-M in 1983, coming from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he taught biomathematics. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Cambridge Univer-sity and a master’s and doctorate in statistics from London University.
He is an elected fellow of the American Statistics Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute.
Nair, who had been with AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., since 1978, holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Malaysia and a doctorate in statistics from the University of California, Berkeley.
He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and a fellow of both the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and of the American Statistical Association.
Wu had taught statistics for the past 17 years at the universities of Waterloo; Wisconsin; and California, Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in statistics.
He holds a bachelor’s in mathematics from the National Taiwan University. He was elected a fellow in the American Statistics Association in 1985 and to fellow status in the Institute of Mathematical Studies in 1984.
