Research

Research Tradition

The GW Department of Statistics is proud of its longstanding research tradition, which dates back to the fundamental and widely referenced work on information and coding theory by Professor Solomon Kullback, Information Theory and Statistics. Kullback co-developed the Kullback-Leibler measure of information in 1951. The department's contributions to the field continued with Professor Jerome Cornfield, a leader in Bayesian statistics, and Professor Samuel Greenhouse, who made historical advancements in the basic methods used in biostatistics and also served as a director in the GW Biostatistics Center. 

Today, our faculty continues to produce high-quality research in both theoretical and applied areas of statistics and probability. They receive prestigious research grants from organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as awards and fellowships from American Statistical Association, the International Statistical Institute, the Guggenheim and Ford Foundations and more. 

Our faculty are involved in several ongoing collaborative research efforts with statistical branches of government agencies, including the Department of Labor and the Environmental Protection Agency. Many faculty participate in the interdisciplinary GW Biostatistics Center and participate in local seminars and conferences.


GW Biostatistics Center

The GW Biostatistics Center brings together an interdisciplinary team of more than 100 biostatisticians and epidemiologists to carry out clinical research studies. The center was originally founded within the GW Department of Statistics in 1972 and moved under the GW Milken Institute School of Public Health in 2016. Several members of the Statistics Department faculty are involved with the center.