Paula Karen Roberson is a

biostatistician Biostatistics (also known as biometry) are the development and application of statistical methods to a wide range of topics in biology. It encompasses the design of biological experiments, the collection and analysis of data from those experimen ...

at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, where she chairs the department of biostatistics. Her research interests include the design of

clinical trial Clinical trials are prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human participants designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments (such as novel vaccines, drugs, dietar ...

nonparametric statistics Nonparametric statistics is the branch of statistics that is not based solely on parametrized families of probability distributions (common examples of parameters are the mean and variance). Nonparametric statistics is based on either being distr ...

, and feature selection. She was president of the

Caucus for Women in Statistics The Caucus for Women in Statistics is a professional society for women in statistics. It was founded in 1971, following discussions in 1969 and 1970 at the annual meetings of the American Statistical Association, with Donna Brogan as its first pr ...

in 2015.

Education and career

Roberson graduated from

Southern Methodist University , mottoeng = "The truth will make you free" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = SACS , academic_affiliations = , religious_affiliation = United Methodist Church , president = R. Gerald Turner , prov ...

in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and statistics. She completed her Ph.D. in

biomathematics Mathematical and theoretical biology, or biomathematics, is a branch of biology which employs theoretical analysis, mathematical models and abstractions of the living organisms to investigate the principles that govern the structure, development a ...

at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

in 1979. Her dissertation, ''Distributional and Robustness Problems in Time-Space Disease Clustering'', was supervised by Lloyd Fisher. She joined the University of Arkansas faculty in 1993, and became the founding chair of the biostatistics department there in 2004.

Recognition

Roberson became 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 number of new fellows per year is limited ...

in 2000. In 2014, 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 an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roberson, Paula K. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American statisticians Women statisticians Biostatisticians Southern Methodist University alumni University of Washington alumni University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences faculty Fellows of the American Statistical Association Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science