Stefanski Named Head of NC State Department of Statistics

Leonard “Len” Stefanski, a longtime NC State professor and prominent statistician, has been named the new head of the university’s Department of Statistics.

Stefanski, the R.A. Fisher Distinguished Professor of Statistics, has been on the NC State faculty since 1986 and was serving as interim department head prior to his appointment.

As head of the department, Stefanski oversees academic, administrative and budgetary matters for around 400 students and 42 faculty. The department offers graduate and undergraduate degrees on campus and through online programs. Its graduate program was ranked #15 in the nation by US News & World Report, and along with the Department of Mathematics, the department also ranks among the country’s top producers of minority master’s degree graduates.

Stefanski is a prominent statistician well-known for his work in measurement error modeling. He has also made important contributions in variable selection, biostatistics, generalized linear models, environmental statistics and other areas.

Stefanski, along with NC State Ph.D. student John Cook, developed SIMEX, a widely used Monte Carlo method for the analysis of data measured with error. He is also one of the authors of the seminal book Measurement Error in Nonlinear Models: A Modern Perspective (second edition) and coauthor, with NC State colleague Dennis Boos, of the textbook Essential Statistical Inference. He has authored more than 100 scientific publications and delivered or submitted more than 90 invited research presentations and papers.

Stefanski has won the department’s Cavell Brownie Mentoring Award, which honored his outstanding mentoring of students and junior faculty, and the D.D. Mason Department Award, which recognized his many years of exemplary service to statistics at NC State. He is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Stefanski earned a Ph.D. and an M.S. in statistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Connecticut.