Leading statistician appointed founding chair of biostatistics at UF

Dr. Peihua Qiu

The University of Florida has named leading statistics researcher Peihua Qiu, Ph.D., the founding chair of its department of biostatistics.

“The position was attractive to me for several reasons,” Qiu said. “I feel the environment at the UF Health Science Center is very supportive of the biostatistics department, especially the top administrators, who recognize the importance of biostatistics. With six health colleges and several institutes at UF, there are enormous resources and collaboration opportunities for the department. There is great potential for the biostatistics department to grow.”

Qiu will start at UF July 1 heading the new department, which is administered jointly by the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions and the College of Medicine.

Qiu is currently a professor at the University of Minnesota’s School of Statistics. He is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He is the editor of Technometrics, the official journal of the American Society for Quality and the American Statistical Association.

Qiu is a major contributor to the development of a statistical analysis method called jump regression analysis, which allows researchers to determine how variables are associated with each other when the relationship among them is not continuous. His research has also focused on describing and analyzing medical images such as MRI images, developing statistical methods for monitoring processes such as a hospital’s daily operations, and analyzing patient survival data. His book “Image Processing and Jump Regression Analysis” won Technometrics’ inaugural Ziegel Prize in 2007 for an outstanding new book on statistical methodology.