Dr. Daren B.H. Cline, professor of statistics at Texas A&M University, has been appointed as interim head of the Texas A&M Department of Statistics, effective April 17, announced Dr. Valen E. Johnson, dean of the College of Science.
Cline, who joined the Texas A&M Statistics faculty in 1984 and has been a full professor since 2002, will fill the department’s top administrative role for the next four months until Georgia Institute of Technology statistician Dr. Brani Vidakovic begins his term as head of Texas A&M Statistics on August 15.
Longtime Texas A&M statistics professor Dr. Michael Longnecker will join Cline at the administrative helm as associate head of Texas A&M Statistics. Longnecker, holder of the George P. Mitchell ’40 Endowed Chair in Statistics since fall 2015, previously served nearly 20 years as associate head of the department (2000-2019), including a brief stint as interim head (2004-2005).
Cline received his Ph.D. in statistics from Colorado State University in 1983 and was a visiting assistant professor at the University of British Columbia for one year prior to coming to Texas A&M. During his 35-year career with Texas A&M Statistics, he also has spent semester-long sabbaticals as a visiting research assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Center for Stochastic Processes (Fall 1986) and as a visiting scientist at Cornell University’s Mathematical Sciences Institute (Spring 1990).
Cline’s research interests beyond stochastic networks include nonlinear time series, ergodicity, Markov chains, distribution tails and regular variation. His work is funded primarily by the National Science Foundation along with the Texas Department of Transportation and Texas Transportation Institute. Likewise, Cline has established a solid reputation as an excellent instructor and mentor, earning a Texas A&M Association of Former Students College-Level Distinguished Teaching Award in 2006 and chairing or co-chairing dozens of statistics students’ master’s or doctoral committees. To date, he has been a member of more than 300 such committees in statistics as well as related disciplines across the Texas A&M campus.
Cline’s extensive record of service to his department, college and university includes current appointments on the college Faculty Advisory Council (2019-present) and department graduate program committee (2018-present) as well as past appointments to the Texas A&M Faculty Senate, college undergraduate curriculum and grievance committees, and as department colloquium chair and undergraduate advisor for applied mathematics majors. Collectively, he has served on no fewer than eight departmental committees, including multiple stints in most cases.
Cline is a member of the American Statistical Association, the International Statistical Institute Bernoulli Society, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the INFORMS Applied Probability Society.
To learn more about Cline and his teaching, research and service efforts, visit https://www.stat.tamu.edu/~dcline/.
For more information about Texas A&M Statistics, go to http://www.stat.tamu.edu.
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Contact: Shana K. Hutchins, (979) 862-1237 or [email protected] or Dr. Daren B.H. Cline, (979) 845-1443 or [email protected]
