Nicole Lazar named statistics department head
Nicole Lazar has been named the new head of the Penn State Department of Statistics, effective July 1, 2024. Lazar succeeds Murali Haran, who has served as head of the department since 2018.
"Nicole's prominence in the field, leadership experience, and passion for the department and its future, position her for success in this role," said Tracy Langkilde, Verne M. Willaman Dean of the Eberly College of Science. "I am excited to work with Nicole and the department to achieve an even higher level of excellence!"
Lazar focuses her research on the foundations of statistical inference and the analysis of functional neuroimaging data. She has pioneered work on the statistical analysis of cognitive neuroscience data, with a focus on functional magnetic resonance imaging. She was named a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 2021, a fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2014, and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute in 2006.
“This is a great time to be a statistician,” Lazar said. “Massive amounts of new types of complex data pose both challenges and opportunities to our profession. The Penn State statistics department has a history of being at the forefront of innovative theory, methods development, and applications, which puts us in a strong position to take advantage of the opportunities that arise from changes in the scientific landscape. I am excited to continue working with my colleagues, as well as with the wonderful students, postdocs, and staff of the department, to help shape the future of statistics.”
Currently, Lazar is a professor of statistics at Penn State, where she began her appointment in 2020. From 2004 to 2020, she was a faculty member at the University of Georgia, where she served as interim department head of statistics from 2014 to 2016. Prior to that, she was on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University from 1996 to 2004. Lazar was president of the Caucus for Women in Statistics in 2019 and is the author of “The Statistical Analysis of Functional MRI Data.” She was past editor of The American Statistician and co-editor of a special edition of that journal, titled Statistical Inference in the 21st Century: A World Beyond p<0.05.
Lazar received her doctoral degree in statistics from the University of Chicago in 1996, her master’s degree in statistics from Stanford University in 1993, and her bachelor’s degree in psychology and statistics from Tel Aviv University in 1988.