Biography
Charmaine Dean is Professor and Burnaby Mountain Research Chair in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at Simon Fraser University. Her 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. Recently, Dr. Dean’s focus has been the study of climate change impacts, particularly in the area of forestry.
Dr. Dean received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Waterloo in 1988. She was 2007 President of the Statistical Society of Canada, 2002 President of the International Biometrics Society, Western North American Region, has served as President of the Biostatistics Section of the Statistical Society of Canada, and has given seven years of service to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, including two as Chair of the Statistical Sciences Grant Selection Committee and one as Chair of the Discovery Accelerator Supplement Committee for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences. She has served on the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Research Advisory Council and on selection panels for that foundation. She serves on the NIH Biostatistics Grant Review Panel; 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 is a member of the College of Reviewers of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and of the MITACS College of Reviewers. She is Associate Editor of Biometrics, of Environmetrics, and of Statistics in Biosciences, and Senior Editor of Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology and of Advances in Disease Surveillance.
She has served in governance at Simon Fraser University in many capacities. She played a major role in establishing the Faculty of Health Sciences in her capacity of Associate Dean of that Faculty and previously in establishing the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at Simon Fraser University; she became the founding Chair of that Department in 2001. She also served on the University’s Faculty Restructuring Task Force from 2006-2008, a major initiative on restructuring the organization of the faculties at SFU.
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; and in 2010 named Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.