Zeger Named Inaugural Hurley-Dorrier Chair in Biostatistics

Scott L. Zeger, PhD

Scott L. Zeger, PhD, was named the inaugural Frank Hurley and Catharine Dorrier Professor and Chair in Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. A gift from the husband and wife to the Department of Biostatistics brings the total number of named chairmanships at the Bloomberg School to three. The other two are the William H. Gates Sr. Professor and Chair in Population and Family Health and the Alfred and Jill Sommer Chair in the Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. Two years ago, Hurley, an alumnus, and Dorrier established the Frank Hurley and Catharine Dorrier Professor in Biostatistics.

Hurley is chair and chief scientific officer of RRD International, a health care product development company that he co-founded in 2002. He is on the Board of Trustees of the Johns Hopkins University. Dorrier is a senior technical advisor at RRD International. She serves on the Bloomberg School’s Health Advisory Board and Hurley is a past member of the same board. They have dedicated their careers to bringing safe and effective health care to people around the world. The couple believes that the key to improving international public health is turning data into information, and information into useful knowledge.

Focusing on the collection and analysis of data from biomedical studies, Zeger develops novel designs and methods of analysis for biomedical data. He has made substantive contributions to environmental epidemiology, quantifying the health effects of smoking and air pollution. Elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine in 2006, Zeger served as statistical expert for the U.S. Justice Department and several states in their suits against the tobacco industry. He is also involved in clinical research, having served on the Board of Scientific Advisors to the Merck Research Laboratory and on the steering committee of the Hopkins Graduate Training Program in Clinical Investigations. Zeger is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, co-editor of the Oxford Press journal Biostatistics and on the editorial boards of the Annual Review of Public Health and the Springer-Verlag Series on Statistical Science. Zeger is the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers and two books. In 2005, Science Watch® identified him as one of the 25 most-cited mathematical scientists of the past decade.

Zeger received his bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1974 and his doctorate in statistics from Princeton University in 1982.

The Department of Biostatistics was founded in 1918, making it one of the first academic departments of statistical science in the world. The faculty and staff is dedicated to designing analytic methods to enable health scientists and professionals in academia, government, pharmaceutical companies, medical research organizations and elsewhere to efficiently draw valid conclusions from their ever-expanding sources of information.

Every student entering the Bloomberg School is taught how to use statistical concepts, interpret data in public health and medical literature and develop data analysis skills by Biostatistics faculty.