The University of Minnesota School of Public Health has appointed Dr. Bradley P. Carlin, head of the division of biostatistics. Dr. Carlin, who has been a professor in the school since 1991, will take over as division head in May 2010. He will work with other school leaders to solidify the division’s ranking as one of the top biostatistics units in the nation. In addition to continuing the high level of research productivity among the division’s faculty members, he will work to grow the division’s student body and educational programs, as well as its focus on collaborative, translational research.

"As head of the Division of Biostatistics, I’m looking forward to working with colleagues across the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center," said Dr. Carlin. "More and more, it’s critical for biostatisticians to collaborate with colleagues across the health sciences. Our division has a good track record of this sort of collaboration in the broader areas of clinical trials and environmental health, as well as the study of complex chronic conditions such as cancer, heart and lung disease, and HIV/AIDS."

Dean John R. Finnegan, dean of the School of Public Health and assistant vice president for public health, said he is pleased to have Dr. Carlin join school leadership.

"Dr. Carlin’s energy and critical thinking will be an asset to his division and to the entire school," said Dean Finnegan. "I’m looking forward to working with him in this next stage of his career and in this next chapter of division leadership."

Dr. Carlin takes over for School of Public Health professor Dr. John Connett, who, after serving as head of the division for nine years, is stepping down to devote more time to his own research interests, which focus on clinical trials and lung health.

Dr. Carlin’s research interests include statistical applications in AIDS research, clinical trial monitoring, joint longitudinal and survival modeling, and spatial and spatio-temporal disease mapping. He also conducts geographical analysis by analyzing public health data that are geographically indexed. He is an expert in Bayes and empirical Bayes methodology, as well as Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for their implementation.

Dr. Carlin has a PhD and MS in statistics from the University of Connecticut and a BS in mathematics and actuarial science from the University of Nebraska. He is a member of the University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center, and currently serves as editor-in-chief of Bayesian Analysis, the official journal of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. He has authored numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals as well as textbooks on Bayesian methods and hierarchical modeling for spatial data.

In 2003, Dr. Carlin was named Mayo Professor in Public Health, the highest faculty honor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. He has received the Mortimer Spiegelman Award from the American Schools of Public Health Association. He is also the 2008 recipient of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health Leonard M. Schuman Award for Excellence in Teaching.