October 27, 2005
Biostatistics Department chair named
Dr. Bruce Weir, director of the Bioinformatics Research Center at North Carolina State and the William Neal Reynolds professor of statistics and genetics there, has been named the next chair of the Department of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine.
The appointment, approved by the UW Board of Regents in September, will be effective Jan. 1.
Weir will succeed Dr. Thomas Fleming, who has led the department for the past 13 years. Fleming will continue as professor of biostatistics and as director of the Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Prevention Trial Network. He also plans to teach his popular clinical trials class next year.
Weir has been a faculty member at North Carolina State since 1976 and has established the graduate program in bioinformatics, a Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics, and the Bioinformatics Research Center.
In 2003 he received North Carolina State’s highest faculty honor, the Gardner Award.
His own research work focuses on statistical genetics. He earned a Ph.D. in statistics with a minor in genetics from North Carolina State in 1968.
