The Department of Statistics is proud of its long research tradition, which dates back to the fundamental and widely referenced work on information and coding theory, by Professor Solomon Kullback, who developed the Kullback-Leibler measure of information.  Other contributions of historical significance were by Professor Jerome Cornfield, and Professor Samuel Greenhouse on Bayesian Statistics, and basic methods used in Biostatistics. These pioneers have brought worldwide recognition to the department and have set a standard that their successors are able to uphold.  In terms of more recent developments, members of the Department have made seminal contributions to statistics in law, economics, and public policy, nonparametric and robust methods, test for goodness-of-fit, probabilistic aspects of algorithms, biostatistics, statistical genetics, Bayesian inference, measures of economic and ecological diversity, foundational aspects of uncertainty quantification, and the mathematics of reliability and risk.  These contributions have appeared in peer-reviewed journals and published books.

Members of the Department have received a large number of research grants-both individual and collaborative – from most of the major research funding organizations, NSF, DoD, NIH, EPA, etc. They have also received prestigious Fellowships, such as the Guggenheim and Ford as well as other professional awards and citations.  The Department has several ongoing collaborative research efforts with statistical branches of government agencies. Two faculty members are involved with the EPA, four with the National Cancer Institute and one is currently working with the Department of Labor. This last initiative is recent and more members are expected to become involved.

Several faculty members serve on the Editorial Boards of leading statistical journals and serve on National Committees of the NAS, NAE, DOE and NIH.  They also have an active role in several major professional societies. Currently, one faculty member is Chair of the Nonparametric Statistics Section of ASA, while others serve as members of ASA committees. 

The Department hosts a research institute, Institute for Reliability and Risk Analysis (IRRA), staffed by faculty and students from various parts of the university and collaborators outside the university.  The mission of the IRRA is to do basic and applied mathematical and statistical research for assessing the risk and reliability of technological, biological software and infrastructure systems.  What distinguishes the IRRA from other similar institutes is its strong emphasis and focus on Bayesian Statistics and Stochastic Process Models both at an applied and a foundational level.  The IRRA has been funded by all major funding outlets of the US Government and also by industry.  It has been involved with multi-university research initiatives and has received, on more than one occasion, funding for equipment and instrumentation.  The IRRA issues several technical reports each year, develops software for reliability and risk analyses, and hosts seminars and colloquia on topics of current interest.