Distinguished Professor Will Deliver Tom Bratcher Memorial Lectures

Media Contact: Lori Fogleman, 254-710-6275

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WACO, Texas (April 11, 2018) — Baylor University’s department of statistical science will host the Tom Bratcher Memorial Lectures April 12-13 in Marrs McLean Science Building, 1214 S. Fourth St.

The speaker will be Raymond J. Carroll, Distinguished Professor in the department of statistics and faculty of nutrition at Texas A&M University’s School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

“Raymond Carroll is one of the foremost statisticians of our generation with over 450 papers published in peer-reviewed journals. He has been the editor for some of the top academic journals in statistics and has been funded through multiple agencies including the National Science Foundation, the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute for Environmental Health,” said Mandy Hering, Ph.D., associate professor of statistical science. “Given that several of the faculty in our department have been connected with Professor Carroll, either as a personal mentor or by interest in his groundbreaking work, he was a natural choice for our speaker this year.”

Carroll will deliver a technical lecture on "Semiparametric Analysis of Complex Polygenic Gene Environment Interactions in Case-Control Studies" from 4 to 5 p.m. Thursday, April 12, in Marrs McLean Science 301. He will deliver a University-wide lecture, “The Complex Nature of Nutrient and Food Intake,” from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Friday, April 13, in Room GL51 of Marrs McLean Science Building.

“Many Baylor faculty members work on problems involving cancer, diet, nutrition and physical exercise, so Professor Carroll’s experience in measuring such tricky quantities will be very beneficial,” Hering said. “He is an energetic and dynamic speaker, so we anticipate that his talk given to the university-wide audience on Thursday will be full of practical and technical instruction that he has gained over the course of his career.”

Carroll’s career has focused on complex data scenarios, including methodology for multivariate functional data of different types, data integration, measurement error, gene-environment interactions, general semiparametrics, molecular biology of nutrition, radiation epidemiology and thyroid cancer risk and physical activity.

He is deeply involved in nutritional surveillance, nutritional epidemiology and dietary patterns. He was the first statistician to receive a U.S. National Cancer Institute MERIT Award and also was honored with the Committee on Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) Presidents’ Award and the Fisher Award and Lecture.

"The Tom Bratcher Memorial Lecture was founded to honor Professor Tom Bratcher, a Baylor professor who passed away unexpectedly in the fall of 2011. He was instrumental in founding the Department of Statistical Science in 2004 at Baylor and also for establishing the Conference of Texas Statisticians, which has now been running annually for almost 40 years," Hering said. "This marks the fourth lecture named in his honor since his death. The goal of the lecture series is to bring to campus internationally and nationally recognized scholars in the field of statistics who are known for bringing clarity to difficult concepts and whose research is of interest to Baylor at large."

by Joy Moton , student newswriter, (254) 710-6805

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