Indian scholar awarded P.K. Sen Distinguished Visiting Professorship
August 17, 2016
Sebastian George, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Statistics and Biostatistics at St. Thomas College, Palai, in Kerala, India, has been named P.K. Sen Distinguished Visiting Professor in Biostatistics at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.
Dr. Sebastian George
George, who is also an adjunct professor in the biostatistics department at Christian Medical College, in Vellore, India, will be at the Gillings School until December, conducting research, teaching, and interacting with Gillings School faculty members and students as well as the broader UNC community.
The visiting professorship is named for Pranab Kumar Sen, PhD, a UNC faculty member for more than 50 years. Sen is the Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor in the Gillings School’s Department of Biostatistics and also teaches in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Statistics and Operations Research.
The professorship recruits aspiring scholars in statistical science from countries broadly defined as “developing” with respect to their statistics and biostatistics workforce. George was selected from a highly competitive field of applicants following an international search by the Gillings School’s biostatistics department.
“Dr. George stood out among the applicants for his strong background in mathematical statistics and his interest in expanding upon his prior exposure to practical biostatistical problems through intensive interactions with the university’s research and student community,” said John Preisser, PhD, research professor of biostatistics and chair of the professorship’s search committee.
George earned master’s degrees in statistics from Mahatma Gandhi University and the University of Kerala, both in Kerala, India, and a doctoral degree in statistics from Pune University in Pune, India.
His research interests include distribution theory, statistical Inference, statistical quality control and analysis of microarray data. Over the last two decades, he has taught graduate students on various subjects including probability theory, multivariate analysis, measure theory, estimation theory and advanced distribution theory. At the Gillings School, he will offer biostatistics graduate students a one-credit course on mixture regression models.
“I am sure this visit will enrich my teaching and research activities in biostatistics in my institute and CMC, Vellore,” George said.
If you are interested in making a gift to the endowed P.K. Sen Distinguished Visiting Professorship to enable other international scholars to work with the Gillings School’s biostatistics department, please visit the UNC Gillings Make a Gift page.
Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: David Pesci, director of communications, (919) 962-2600 or dpesci@unc.edu
