Rafael Irizarry is a professor of

biostatistics 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 experime ...

at the

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. The school grew out of the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers, the nation's first ...

and professor of biostatistics and

computational biology Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the field also has fo ...

at the

Dana–Farber Cancer Institute Dana–Farber Cancer Institute is a comprehensive cancer treatment and research institution in Boston, Massachusetts. Dana–Farber is the founding member of Dana–Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, Harvard's Comprehensive Cancer Center designated b ...

. Irizarry is known as one of the founders of the

Bioconductor Bioconductor is a Free software, free, Open-source software, open source and Open source software development, open development software project for the analysis and comprehension of Genome, genomic data generated by Wet laboratory, wet lab experi ...

project.

Education

Irizarry gained his

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

from the

University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

in 1993, followed by a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

degree from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1994. He continued his studies at Berkeley, gaining a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in statistics in 1998. His PhD thesis explored the use of statistics to model harmonies in sound signals and was supervised by David R. Brillinger.}

Research and career

Irizarry joined the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 1998, where his research focused on

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

and

. He has worked on the analysis and processing of data arising from

microarray A microarray is a multiplex lab-on-a-chip. Its purpose is to simultaneously detect the expression of thousands of genes from a sample (e.g. from a tissue). It is a two-dimensional array on a solid substrate—usually a glass slide or silicon t ...

experiments and helped develop the Robust Multiarray Analysis (RMA) method for

microarray analysis A microarray is a multiplex lab-on-a-chip. Its purpose is to simultaneously detect the expression of thousands of genes from a sample (e.g. from a tissue). It is a two-dimensional array on a solid substrate—usually a glass slide or silicon t ...

in collaboration with statistician

Terry Speed Terence Paul "Terry" Speed (born 14 March 1943 in Victor Harbor, South Australia), FAA FRS is an Australian statistician. A senior principal research scientist at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, he is known for his co ...

and colleagues; this method was later extended as the frozen RMA (fRMA) method. He has also worked on the analysis of

next-generation sequencing Massive parallel sequencing or massively parallel sequencing is any of several high-throughput approaches to DNA sequencing using the concept of massively parallel processing; it is also called next-generation sequencing (NGS) or second-generation s ...

data. Irizarry is one of the founders of the

project, an open-source and development software project for the analysis of genomic data in the R programming language. He has been involved in the development of several of the most used Bioconductor packages, including the 'affy' package for the analysis of

Affymetrix Affymetrix is now Applied Biosystems, a brand of DNA microarray products sold by Thermo Fisher Scientific that originated with an American biotechnology research and development and manufacturing company of the same name. The Santa Clara, Califor ...

microarray data. Irizarry is the developer and instructor for the online Data Analysis for Life Sciences course on the Harvard University edX platform; this course enrolls over 30,000 students per year.

Awards and honors

2009

COPSS Presidents' Award The COPSS Presidents' Award is given annually by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies to a young statistician in recognition of outstanding contributions to the profession of statistics. The COPSS Presidents' Award is generally ...

in statistics. 2009 Mortimer Spiegelman Award from the American Public Health Association given to outstanding public health statisticians under the age of 40. 2017 Benjamin Franklin Award in Bioinformatics for his promotion of free and open-access materials and methods in the life sciences. He was elected as a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the International Society for Computational Biology in 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Irizarry, Rafael Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American bioinformaticians University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health faculty Harvard School of Public Health faculty Fellows of the American Statistical Association R (programming language) people