Ibrahim honored with the prestigious Wilks Memorial Award

August 30, 2024

Joseph Ibrahim, PhD, was the recipient of the American Statistical Association’s received Samuel S. Wilks Memorial Award. He is the second recipient from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Department of Biostatistics. The late Pranab K. Sen, Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Biostatistics previously received the award in 2010.

Dr. Joseph Ibrahim

The Wilks Award was established in 1964 to honor Dr. Samuel Wilks’ memory and distinguished career in the statistics field. Ibrahim was selected for this prestigious award for his distinguished career in biostatistics, particularly in Bayesian survival analysis, prior elicitation, model diagnostics and missing data problems – as well as his contributions to cancer research, genomics and statistical education –which have significantly advanced the field and impacted public health and medical research.

Ibrahim is an Alumni Distinguished Professor of biostatistics and has been faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill since 2002. His research focuses on developing statistical methodology related to clinical trials, cancer and genomics research. He is also director of graduate studies for the Gillings School’s Department of Biostatistics and director of the department’s Biostatistics for Research in Genomics and Training Grant.

Michael Hudgens, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Biostatistics added, “On behalf of the Department of Biostatistics, we congratulate Professor Ibrahim for receiving the 2024 Wilks Memorial Award. Among the most prestigious awards in statistics, I can think of no one more deserving. Professor Ibrahim has made significant contributions to statistical methodological research and its application to medicine and public health. He is an exceptional collaborator, mentor and teacher with an unwavering work-ethic and passion for biostatistics that serves as an inspiring example for both students and colleagues.”

Throughout his time at Carolina, he has advised 48 pre-doctoral students and eight postdoctoral fellows in the Department of Biostatistics, guiding them toward achieving exceptional research standards.

Most of his students successfully publish parts of their thesis work in top statistical journals before graduation. Additionally, as the director and original principal investigator of the T32 Cancer Genomics Training Grant, he has secured funding for 35 pre-doctoral students since 2004.

As the director of graduate studies in biostatistics, a position that he has held continuously for 22 years, Ibrahim has been responsible for shaping several teaching programs within the department. Since 2015, he initiated major curriculum updates and changes for eight graduate-level courses and was instrumental in starting several new data science and computing courses in biostatistics.

Contact the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health communications team at sphcomm@unc.edu.