A Conversation with Nan Laird

TL;DR

Nan Laird's pioneering work in statistical methods for longitudinal data, missing data, and meta-analysis has significantly advanced biostatistics, with her influential EM algorithm paper and applied research impacting medicine and genetics.

Contribution

This interview highlights Nan Laird's fundamental contributions to biostatistics, including her development of key methods and her influence across multiple scientific disciplines.

Findings

Developed influential statistical methods for longitudinal data

Contributed to the understanding of missing data techniques

Her work on the EM algorithm is among the most cited in science

Abstract

Nan McKenzie Laird is the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of Biostatistics at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She has made fundamental contributions to statistical methods for longitudinal data analysis, missing data and meta-analysis. In addition, she is widely known for her work in statistical genetics and in statistical methods for psychiatric epidemiology. Her 1977 paper with Dempster and Rubin on the EM algorithm is among the top 100 most highly cited papers in science [Nature 524 (2014) 550-553]. Her applied work on medical practice errors is widely cited among the medical malpractice community. Nan was born in Gainesville, Florida, in 1943. Shortly thereafter, her parents Angus McKenzie Laird and Myra Adelia Doyle, moved to Tallahassee, Florida, with Nan and her sister Victoria Mell. Nan started college at Rice University in 1961, but then transferred to the University of Georgia where she received a B.S. in Statistics in 1969 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After graduation Nan worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Draper Laboratories where she worked on Kalman filtering for the Apollo Man to the Moon Program. She enrolled in the Statistics Department at Harvard University in 1971 and received her Ph.D. in 1975. She joined the faculty of Harvard School of Public Health upon receiving her Ph.D., and remains there as research professor, after her retirement in 2015. The interview was conducted in Boston, Massachusetts, in July 2014. A link to Nan's full CV can be found at \surlwww.hsph.harvard.edu/nan-laird/.