Charmaine Dean
Dr. Charmaine Dean (B.Sc., Mathematics, University of Saskatchewan; M.Math and Ph.D., University of Waterloo) is currently Vice-President, Research and International and Professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. Previously, she served as Dean of Science at Western University. Prior to her service at Western, she played a major role in establishing the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University in her capacity of Associate Dean of that Faculty, and was the founding Chair of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, at Simon Fraser University.
Dr. Dean’s research interest lies in the development of methodology for disease mapping, longitudinal studies, the design of clinical trials, and spatio-temporal analyses. Much of this work has been motivated by direct applications to important practical problems in biostatistics and ecology. Her current main research applications are in survival after coronary artery bypass surgery, mapping disease and mortality rates, forest ecology, fire management, smoke exposure estimation from satellite imagery, and modeling of temporary and intermittent stream flow for flood analysis and predictions. She holds an NSERC Discovery Grant.
Dr. Dean was 2007 President of the Statistical Society of Canada, 2002 President of the International Biometrics Society, Western North American Region, and has served as President of the Biostatistics Section of the Statistical Society of Canada. She served as Chair of NSERC’s Statistical Sciences Grant Selection Committee and Discovery Accelerator Supplement Committee for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences.
She has served as Chair of the NIH Biostatistics Grant Review Panel; on the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Advisory Council and on selection panels for that foundation; on the Board of Directors of the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences; on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Banff International Research Station; and as a member of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council College of Reviewers. She is a member of the Mitacs College of Reviewers and of College of Reviews of the Canada Research Chairs Program. She is Associate Editor of Biometrics, of Environmetrics, and of Statistics in Biosciences, and Senior Editor of Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology.
Dr. Dean is an engaged member of several relevant boards including, Compute Ontario, the Southern Ontario Smart Computing Innovation Platform, the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Institute for Cybersecurity and Privacy, Dr. Dean has also served as a board member for the US National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) Corporation, the National Institute for Complex Data Structures and the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute. She is dedicated to developing outstanding computing capabilities for researchers and for building capacity in Canada and is interested in bringing together diverse communities to drive forward a unified direction for data management activities and priorities.
In 2003, Dr. Dean was awarded the CRM-SSC prize; in 2007 she was named Fellow of the American Statistical Association; in 2007 awarded the University of Waterloo Alumni Achievement Medal; in 2010 named Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and in 2020 was named Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.
