The Department of Statistics in the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) was established in 1967, with a graduate program in 1969, as part of a major expansion of the University of Rochester under the presidency of W. Allen Wallis, a distinguished economist and statistician. Around the same time the School of Medicine and Dentistry established a Division of Biostatistics directed by CL. Odoroff. Under his skillful leadership the Division developed into a major academic unit. After Dr. Odoroff s untimely death in 1987, W. J. Hall served as Acting Director of the Division. M. Tanner served as Chair from 1990-1994. In 1991 the Division was upgraded to full Departmental status. Following Dr. Tanner's move to Northwestern University, David Oakes served as Chair from 1995-2002. He stepped down in 2002. After a national search and the development of a strategic plan for the Department by the University administration, Andrei Yakovlev was appointed Chair and the name of the Department was changed to 'Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology' (DBCB) to reflect a new emphasis on bioinformatics. Between 2002 and 2008 the Department tripled in size, and now has 21 tenured or tenure track faculty lines together with a number of research track faculty. Sadly, Dr. Yakovlev passed away suddenly in February 2008. Dr. Oakes has now been appointed interim chair while a national search is being conducted for Dr. Yakovlev's permanent successor. URMC Dean D. Guzick has committed the Medical School to an energetic search and to maintaining the broad focus of the department. The Search Committee includes EHSC members Shanna Swan, Edwin vanWijngaarden and Wojciech Zareba. At the time of writing, six candidates for the position of Chair have visited the DBCB and second visits are being scheduled.
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