The Department of Statistics at Texas A&M University will pay tribute this week to one of its longtime leaders, Dr. Raymond J. Carroll, by hosting a conference in his honor celebrating his trailblazing career in areas ranging from problems of measurement error to statistical regression modeling to statistical methods in genomics.
The two-day Conference on Statistical Methods for High Dimensional Complex Data, set for May 23-24 at the Hilton Hotel and Conference Center, will feature morning and afternoon sessions organized around four topical areas pioneered by Carroll: measurement error, genomics and epidemiology, regression, and robustness and Bayesian methods. Talks will be presented by a combination of rising stars and senior scientists, including Carroll’s colleagues, contemporaries and former students representing sectors ranging from academia to industry.
Thursday’s activities will kick off with an 8 a.m. opening ceremony featuring remarks from College of Arts and Sciences Dean Dr. Mark J. Zoran, Professor and Head of Texas A&M Statistics Dr. Brani Vidakovic and Distinguished Professor of Statistics and Conference Chair Dr. Bani K. Mallick and then conclude with a 6 p.m. conference dinner in the Hilton’s Bluebonnet Ballroom. Friday’s program will run from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and include lunch.
Carroll, who joined the Texas A&M Statistics faculty in 1987, was appointed as a distinguished professor in 1997 and as the inaugural holder of the Jill and Stuart A. Harlin ’83 Chair in Statistics in 2014. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), he is internationally renowned as the founder of nonlinear measurement error modeling — the quantification of uncertainty in statistical regression when predictors cannot be accurately ascertained. His methods in this area are widely used in nutritional and radiation epidemiology, and the related book he co-authored in 2005 is considered the definitive treatment of the field.
“Raymond J. Carroll's contributions to statistics and various scientific fields have been profound and extensive,” said Mallick, inaugural holder the Susan M. Arseven ’75 Chair in Data Science and Computational Statistics. “His body of work encompasses foundational advancements in statistical theory, pioneering methodological developments and significant insights across numerous disciplines.”
A native of Wichita Falls, Texas, Carroll earned his Ph.D. in statistics from Purdue University and spent 13 years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill prior to coming to Texas A&M, where he also is a member of the faculties of nutrition and toxicology. He has served since 2010 as director of the Texas A&M Institute for Applied Mathematics and Computational Statistics (IAMCS) and is founding director of the Center for Statistical Bioinformatics as well as the namesake of the Raymond J. Carroll Young Investigator Award, established in his honor at Texas A&M in 2009. His work is characterized by a combination of deep theoretical effort, innovative methodological development and close contact with science — immeasurable contributions that have impacted a broad variety of fields, including marine biology, laboratory assay methods, econometrics, epidemiology and molecular biology. In addition, he has been instrumental in mentoring and helping young researchers, from his own students and postdoctoral trainees to countless others in the statistical community.
Throughout his five-decade career, Carroll has made fundamental contributions in many areas of statistical methodology and practice. In addition to nonlinear measurement error modeling, he co-founded the area of variance function modeling — the modeling of variability as a function of predictors — that has found application in econometrics, immunoassay analysis, quality control, marine sciences, sociology and public health. He has made fundamental contributions to the study of gene-environment interactions on disease, including developing the most efficient methods available in the field. He co-wrote along with Dr. Margaret Wu the first methodological paper on what is now known as informative censoring, his most-cited paper in a statistics journal. Carroll has published more papers in the Journal of the American Statistical Association than anyone else, and he has had continuous federal research funding as a principal investigator since 1975.
Carroll also has influenced the analysis of clinical trials in the pharmaceutical world. In a series of papers with Craig Mallinckrodt of Eli Lilly and Geert Molenberghs, he showed that the common means of dealing with dropout was flawed, and now modern methods are being used to handle dropouts at Eli Lilly and elsewhere.
“From the beginning of his career, Ray chose to address the most critical and challenging problems rather than opting for incremental progress,” Mallick said. “As a result, he has established and shaped several key areas within statistics, such as weighting and transformation in regression, measurement error modeling, quantitative methods for nutritional epidemiology, and nonparametric and semiparametric regression. This conference aims to highlight some of Ray's major research contributions and provide commentary on their impact from leading statisticians.”
Carroll’s many career honors include mention among Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers 2014, the American Statistical Association’s Gottfried E. Noether Senior Scholar Award for Nonparametric Statistics (2014), the National Cancer Institute’s Method to Extend Research In Time (MERIT) Award (2005), the National Institute of Statistical Sciences’ Jerome Sacks Award for Multidisciplinary Research (2003), the International Society for Bayesian Analysis’ Mitchell Prize (2003), the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies’ Fisher Award and Lecture (2002) and President’s Award (1988) and the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Award (1996). He is also a two-time Texas A&M Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award in Research winner (2004, 1994) and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Western Ontario (2022) and the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium (2012).
Learn more about the upcoming conference or about Carroll and his career expertise and accomplishments.