Charmaine B. Dean (born 1958) is a statistician from

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger, more populous island of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the country. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is the southernmost island in ...

. She is the vice president for research at the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

, a professor of statistical and actuarial sciences at both Waterloo and Western University, the former president of the Western North American Region of the International Biometric Society, and the former President of the Statistical Society of Canada. Her research interests include

longitudinal studies A longitudinal study (or longitudinal survey, or panel study) is a research design that involves repeated observations of the same variables (e.g., people) over long periods of time (i.e., uses longitudinal data). It is often a type of observation ...

survival analysis Survival analysis is a branch of statistics for analyzing the expected duration of time until one event occurs, such as death in biological organisms and failure in mechanical systems. This topic is called reliability theory, reliability analysis ...

, spatiotemporal data, heart surgery, and

wildfire A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a ...

Education and career

Dean was born in

San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago San Fernando, officially the City of San Fernando, is the most populous city and second most populous municipality in Trinidad and Tobago, after Chaguanas. Sando, as it is known to many local Trinidadians, occupies 19 km2 and is located in t ...

in 1958 and moved to Canada when she was 19. She graduated in 1980 with honours in mathematics from the

University of Saskatchewan The University of Saskatchewan (U of S, or USask) is a Universities in Canada, Canadian public university, public research university, founded on March 19, 1907, and located on the east side of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, Saskatch ...

. She did her graduate studies at the

, earning a master's degree in 1984 and a Ph.D. in 1988, supervised by Jerry Lawless. Her dissertation was ''Mixed Poisson Models and Regression Methods for Count Data''. After a year at the

University of Calgary {{Infobox university , name = University of Calgary , image = University of Calgary coat of arms without motto scroll.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms , former ...

, she joined the faculty at

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a Public university, public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It maintains three campuses in Greater Vancouver, respectively located in Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, British Columbia, Surrey, and ...

in 1989, and became the founding chair of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science there at its establishment in 2001. She served as president of th
Western North American Region
of the International Biometric Society in 2002 and of the Statistical Society of Canada in 2007. She became Burnaby Mountain Research Chair at Simon Fraser before moving to Western as dean of science in 2011. She stepped down as dean at Western and became vice president for research at Waterloo in 2017.

Recognition

Dean was elected as a

Fellow of the American Statistical Association Like many other academic professional societies, the American Statistical Association (ASA) uses the title of Fellow of the American Statistical Association as its highest honorary grade of membership. The designation of ASA Fellow has been a sign ...

in 2007, and in 2010 she was elected as a Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

. She is also an elected member of the

International Statistical Institute The International Statistical Institute (ISI) is a professional association of statisticians. At a meeting of the Jubilee Meeting of the Royal Statistical Society, statisticians met and formed the agreed statues of the International Statistical ...

and a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. In 2003, she won the CRM-SSC Prize in Statistics of the

Centre de Recherches Mathématiques The Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM) is the first mathematical research institute in Canada, located at the Université de Montréal. The CRM has ten research laboratories, one in each of: mathematical analysis, number theory and symbolic ...

and the Statistical Society of Canada. In 2012 she won the Trinidad & Tobago Canadian High Commission Award. She was awarded the Gold Medal of the Statistical Society of Canada in 2023.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dean, Charmaine 1958 births Living people Canadian statisticians Women statisticians Trinidad and Tobago academics University of Saskatchewan alumni Academic staff of the University of Calgary Academic staff of Simon Fraser University Academic staff of the University of Western Ontario Academic staff of the University of Waterloo Elected Members of the International Statistical Institute Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the American Statistical Association Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Presidents of the Statistical Society of Canada People from San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago