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Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements (1998)

Chapter: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff

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Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 1998. Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6037.
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Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff

JOHN E. ROLPH (Chair) is professor of statistics and chair of the Department of Information and Operations Management in the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. He previously was on the research staff of the RAND Corporation and has held faculty positions at University College London, Columbia University, the RAND Graduate School for Policy Studies, and the Health Policy Center of RAND/University of California at Los Angeles. His research interests include empirical Bayes methods and the application of statistics to the law and to public policy. He has served as editor of the American Statistical Association magazine Chance, and he currently is incoming chair of the National Research Council's Committee on National Statistics. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He received A.B. and Ph.D. degrees in statistics from the University of California at Berkeley.

MARION R. BRYSON is the Director of Research and Development for North Tree Management, an entrepreneurial activity in Monterey, California. He has held many positions in the federal government, 22 years primarily in the operational test arena. He served as scientific advisor at CDEC, director of CDEC, and technical director of the Test and Experimentation Command. Prior to his government service, he taught in several colleges and universities, including Duke University. He is a past president and fellow of the Military Operations Research Society. He is the recipient of the Vance Wanner Memorial Award in Military

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 1998. Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6037.
×

Operations Research and the Samuel S. Wilks Award in Army Experimental Design. He holds a Ph.D. degree in statistics from Iowa State University.

HERMAN CHERNOFF is professor of statistics in the Department of Statistics at Harvard University. He previously held professorships at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana. His current research centers on applications of statistics to genetics and molecular biology, and his past work specialized in large sample theory, sequential analysis, and optimal design of experiments. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has served as president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and associate editor of several statistical journals. He is a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Statistical Association. He received a B.S. degree in mathematics from City College of New York, Sc. M. and Ph.D. degrees in applied mathematics from Brown University, an honorary A.M. degree from Harvard University, and honorary Sc.D. degrees from the Ohio State University and the Technion.

JOHN D. CHRISTIE is a senior fellow and assistant to the president at the Logistics Management Institute, a non-profit institution in McLean, Virginia. Before joining the institute he was the Director, Acquisition Policy & Program Integration for the Undersecretary of Defense (Acquisition) in the U.S. Department of Defense. Prior to that he was vice president of two different professional service firms, while also serving for 7 years as a member of the Army Science Board. During an earlier period of government service he held various positions at the Federal Energy Administration and the Defense Department. Previously, he was a member of the Bell Labs technical staff. He holds S.B., S.M., E.M.E., and Sc.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all in mechanical engineering.

MICHAEL L. COHEN is a senior program officer for the Committee on National Statistics. Previously, he was a mathematical statistician at the Energy Information Administration, an assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland, a research associate at the Committee on National Statistics, and a visiting lecturer at the Department of Statistics, Princeton University. His general area of research is the use of statistics in public policy, with particular interest in census undercount and model validation. He is also interested in robust estimation. He received a B.S. degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in statistics from Stanford University.

ANURADHA DAS served as research assistant with the Committee on National Statistics, National Research Council. In addition to the Panel on Statistical

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 1998. Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6037.
×

Methods for Testing and Evaluating Defense Systems, she concurrently worked on projects related to integrated environmental and economic accounting and longitudinal research on children. She previously worked on studies related to health, aging, disability, and the census. She holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a master's degree in computer and information science.

CANDICE S. EVANS is a senior project assistant with the Committee on National Statistics. She is also currently working with the Panel on Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas. Previously she has worked with the Panel on Retirement Income Modeling and the Panel on International Capital Transactions.

ERIC M. GAIER is a Research Fellow with Logistics Management Institute of McLean, Va. Currently, his research at the Institute focuses on the economic impact of implementing advanced NASA technologies in the integrated aviation community. Previous research has focused on the role of information in principal agent relationships. He holds a B.S. in Economics from Florida State University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Duke University.

LOUIS GORDON is a consultant in Palo Alto, California. Previously, he was a statistician at the Filoli Information Systems Corporation. He has held academic appointments at the University of Southern California and at Stanford University. He has also worked as a statistician in industry and in the federal government. He has held J.S. Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships. His research interests are in non-parametric statistics.

KATHRYN BLACKMOND LASKEY is an associate professor of systems engineering at George Mason University. She was previously a principal scientist at Decision Science Consortium, Inc. Her primary research interest is the study of decision theoretically based knowledge representation and inference strategies for automated reasoning under uncertainty. She has worked on methods for automated construction of Bayesian belief networks and for recognizing when a system's current problem model is inadequate. She has worked with domain experts to develop Bayesian belief network models to be used in automated reasoning. She received a B.S. degree in mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.S. degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan, and a joint Ph.D. in statistics and public affairs from Carnegie Mellon University.

ROBERT C. MARSHALL is a professor and head of the Department of Economics at Penn State University. Previously, he taught at Duke University. His research-using theoretical, empirical, and numerical methods of analysis-has included a broad range of topics-housing, labor, the expected utility paradigm, and measurements of mobility. He is best known for his work on auctions and

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 1998. Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6037.
×

procurements, which has focused on collusion by bidders. He received an A.B. degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. degree from the University of California at San Diego.

VIJAYAN N. NAIR is professor of statistics and professor of industrial and operations engineering and incoming chair of the Department of Statistics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Previously, he was a research scientist at Bell Laboratories. His research interests include statistics in advanced manufacturing, quality and reliability improvement, design and analysis of industrial experiments, and process control. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the Institute for Mathematical Statistics, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and a senior member of the American Society for Quality. He is currently the joint editor of the International Statistical Review, is a past editor of Technometrics and has served on the editorial boards of several other statistical journals. He has a B. Econs (Hons.) degree from the University of Malaya and a Ph. D. in statistics from the University of California, Berkeley.

ROBERT T. O'NEILL is director of the Office of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Acting Director of the Division of Epidemiology and Surveillance in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) of the Food and Drug Administration. He is responsible for postmarketing surveillance and safety of new drugs, and for providing statistical support to all programs of CDER, which include advice in all drug/disease areas on the design, analysis, and evaluation of clinical trials performed by sponsors seeking approval to market new drugs. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, and a former member of the board of directors of the Society for Clinical Trials and he is active in several professional societies. He received a B.A. degree from the College of the Holy Cross and a Ph.D. degree in mathematical statistics and biometry from Catholic University of America.

STEPHEN M. POLLOCK is professor of industrial and operations engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Previously, he served as a consultant at Arthur D. Little, Inc., and a member of the faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School. He teaches courses in stochastic processes, decision analysis, and reliability and mathematical modeling and has engaged in a variety of research areas and methods, including search theory, sequential detection of change, queuing systems, criminal recidivism, police patrol, and filling processes. He also serves as a consultant to more than 30 companies and other organizations. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has been senior editor of IIE Transactions, area editor of Operations Research, and presi

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 1998. Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6037.
×

dent of the Operations Research Society of America. He holds a B. Eng. Phys. from Cornell and S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in physics and operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

JESSE H. POORE is professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee and president of Software Engineering Technology, Inc. He conducts research in cleanroom software engineering and teaches software engineering courses. He has held academic appointments at Florida State University and Georgia Tech; has served as a National Science Foundation rotator, worked in the Executive Office of the President, and was executive director of the Committee on Science and Technology in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is a member of ACM, IEEE and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He holds a Ph.D. in information and computer science from Georgia Tech.

FRANCISCO J. SAMANIEGO is professor in the Intercollege Division of Statistics and Director of the Teaching Resources Center at the University of California at Davis. He has held visiting appointments in the Department of Statistics at Florida State University and in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington. His research interests include mathematical statistics, decision theory, reliability theory and survival analysis, and statistical applications, primarily in the fields of education, engineering and public health. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the Royal Statistical Society and is a member of the International Statistical Institute. He received a B.S. degree from Loyola University of Los Angeles, an M.S. degree from Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, all in mathematics.

DENNIS E. SMALLWOOD is the Roger's Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy. Previously he was a senior economist with RAND where he conducted research related to national security, including defense acquisition, industrial base and costing issues. He has held previous positions at the Pentagon, working on strategic arms control issues; he also served as head of the Economic Analysis and Resource Planning Division, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Program Analysis and Evaluation. He was previously an associate professor of economics at the University of California at San Diego where he worked on issues related to the economics of health and of law. He received B.A. and M.A. degrees in mathematics from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. degree in economics from Yale University.

DUANE L. STEFFEY is senior program officer with the Committee on National Statistics, and he served as the panel study director until July 1995. Concurrently, he is associate professor of mathematical sciences at San Diego State

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 1998. Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6037.
×

University, where he teaches courses in Bayesian statistics, statistical computing, and categorical data analysis. He previously worked at Westinghouse and was involved in conducting probabilistic risk assessment of commercial nuclear energy facilities. He engages broadly in interdisciplinary research and consulting, and current professional interests include applications of statistics in environmental monitoring, transportation demand modeling, and census methodology. He received a B.S. degree and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in statistics, all from Carnegie Mellon University.

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 1998. Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6037.
×
Page 221
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 1998. Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6037.
×
Page 222
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 1998. Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6037.
×
Page 223
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 1998. Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6037.
×
Page 224
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 1998. Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6037.
×
Page 225
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 1998. Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6037.
×
Page 226
Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements Get This Book
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For every weapons system being developed, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) must make a critical decision: Should the system go forward to full-scale production? The answer to that question may involve not only tens of billions of dollars but also the nation's security and military capabilities. In the milestone process used by DOD to answer the basic acquisition question, one component near the end of the process is operational testing, to determine if a system meets the requirements for effectiveness and suitability in realistic battlefield settings. Problems discovered at this stage can cause significant production delays and can necessitate costly system redesign.

This book examines the milestone process, as well as the DOD's entire approach to testing and evaluating defense systems. It brings to the topic of defense acquisition the application of scientific statistical principles and practices.

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