Welcome from the Department Chair

Welcome to the website for the Department of Statistics, the academic statistics department of George Mason University. On these pages, you can find out more about our distinguished faculty and our graduate programs.

Our department has expertise in many cutting-edge areas of statistical research. Three particular emphases are biostatistics, the application of statistics to medical research; document forensics, the analysis of handwriting for national security purposes; and computational statistics, inculding visualization and data mining. The Department has hired two new tenure-track faculty in biostatistics, adding expertise in these areas. In addition, currently four faculty and a Ph.D. student are engaged in research for the Document Forensics Laboratory.

In addition to our masters and doctoral programs in Statistical Science, we now offer an M.S. in Epidemiology and Biostatistics jointly with the College of Health and Human Services. We also have a number of prestigious 15 credit graduate certificates that are designed for working professionals to expand their expertise in statistics. Certificates are available in Biostatistics, Federal Statistics, and Signal Processing.

We offer a limited number of competitive research and teaching assistantships for full-time graduate studies. Part-time graduate students will find our campus quite convenient, as we offer all graduate courses one night per week after 4:30 p.m., and a free CUE bus is available from the Vienna/Fairfax-GMU metro station.

We are excited about the future direction of the Department, our graduate programs, and our faculty’s sponsored research. If you are a student, we invite you to consider applying here!

Sincerely,                                                    

William F. Rosenberger                            

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A Brief History of the Department of Statistics

Edward Wegman Chair 1992-1999

Statistics initially entered the School of IT and Engineering through the Department of Systems Engineering, from which the Department of Operations Research and Applied Statistics split off in 1986. Carl Harris was the first Chair. In 1992, the Department again split, and the first department centered specifically in statistics was formed, called the Department of Applied and Engineering Statistics, with Edward Wegman as Chair. In 1999, A. Richard Bolstein succeeded Professor Wegman in the chairmanship. In 2006, William F. Rosenberger assumed the chairmanship upon Professor Bolstein’s retirement, and the name of the department was changed to “Department of Statistics”.

A. Richard Bolstein Chair 1999-2006

While the Department had always had a thriving M.S. program in Statistical Science, the Ph.D. program in Statistical Science did not begin until 2007. Other new graduate programs include a joint M.S. in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, begun in 2005, and two dual M.S. degree programs with Operational Research and with Mathematics in 2007. The Statistical Consulting Center, founded by Professor Bolstein in 2001, is currently directed by Professor Clifton Sutton. The Department currently has 13 regular faculty, adjunct faculty, 19 full-time graduate assistants, and over 60 graduate students.