At its Annual General Meeting on June 13, CANSSI expressed its deep appreciation to four outgoing members of the Board of Governors. Arthur Charpentier (Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)), Richard J. Cook (University of Waterloo), Lisa Lix (University of Manitoba), and Joel Martin (National Research Council Canada) concluded their three-year terms at the end of June. Lisa was completing a second consecutive term, representing a notable six-year contribution to the Board.
Four new Board members were elected by CANSSI’s institutional members to take their place. The new Board members are David Haziza (University of Ottawa), Aurélie Labbe (HEC Montréal), Xuewen Lu (University of Calgary), and Michael McIsaac (University of Prince Edward Island). Their terms will run from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2028.
We thank the departing Board members and welcome the new representatives of Canada’s statistical sciences community.
David Haziza
David Haziza is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Ottawa.
He is interested in the theory and application of survey sampling. His research interests include inference in the presence of missing data, inference in the presence of influential units, resampling methods, and machine learning methods.
He serves as an Associate Editor of several journals, including the Journal of the American Statistical Association and the Canadian Journal of Statistics, and has led two CANSSI Collaborative Research Teams.
Aurélie Labbe
Aurélie Labbe is a professor in the Department of Decision Sciences at HEC Montréal. She specializes in large-scale data analysis. With a master’s degree in Statistics from Université de Montréal and a PhD in the same discipline from the University of Waterloo, she has spent over 15 years developing statistical tools for big data with applications in the fields of genomics, neuroscience, and biostatistics. Since joining HEC Montréal in 2016, her research interests have largely focused on the analytical challenges generated by data from intelligent transportation systems. In 2023, she was appointed Scientific Co-Director – Academic Partnerships of IVADO, a large research consortium in artificial intelligence.
Xuewen Lu
Xuewen Lu is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Calgary.
Dr. Lu’s research encompasses big data and high-dimensional data analysis, variable selection methods, machine learning and deep learning methods, semiparametric and nonparametric models, dimension reduction methods, data mining and statistical computing, biostatistics, empirical likelihood, survival analysis, reliability theory, and generalized linear/additive and mixed models.
Michael McIsaac
Dr. Michael McIsaac is a Professor in the School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Dr. McIsaac’s research interests include the development and application of statistical methods for health studies. Dr. McIsaac works collaboratively with physicians and epidemiologists in the design and analysis of studies related to, among other things, cancer, rheumatology, vasculitis, retinal diseases, dental readiness, adolescent health, and mental health. His specific areas of interest include statistical methods for efficient two-phase study designs and for the analysis of incomplete data. Dr. McIsaac is affiliated with the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children Study and the PEI Mental Well-Being Research Advisory Table.
Dr. McIsaac is very interested in Statistics education and pedagogy; he often participates in conferences and workshops on Statistics education and earned a Certificate in University Teaching from the University of Waterloo’s Centre for Teaching Excellence. He is also actively involved in service to the international Statistics community. He has been a regional representative on the Board of the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) for both Ontario and the Atlantic Region, and has previously served as a member of the Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society (ENAR)’s Council for Emerging and New Statisticians (CENS), as a member of the steering committee for CENS, as the chair of the Statistical Society of Canada’s Committee on New Investigators, and as a member of the SSC’s Census At School Canada Committee.
