Dr. Nan Laird is the distinguished Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of Biostatistics (Emerita) at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she has shaped the field through more than forty years of groundbreaking methodological contributions. She earned her PhD in Statistics from Harvard University in 1975 under Arthur Dempster, following earlier work as a computer programmer on the Apollo program at MIT's Draper Laboratory from 1969 to 1971. Her academic career at Harvard began immediately after completing her doctorate, and she served as Chair of the Department of Biostatistics from 1990 to 1999, significantly advancing the department's prominence during a critical period for biostatistical innovation. Throughout her tenure, she established herself as a leading figure who consistently bridged theoretical statistics with pressing public health challenges through practical, implementable solutions.
Dr. Laird is renowned for her seminal contributions to statistical methodology, most notably her co-authorship of the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm paper with Art Dempster and Don Rubin in 1977, which ranks among the top 100 most highly cited papers across all scientific disciplines. She developed widely adopted methods for longitudinal data analysis, meta-analysis, and statistical genetics that have become standard tools in biomedical research, with applications spanning childhood obesity studies, genetic investigations of Alzheimer's disease and bipolar disorder, and quantification of adverse events in healthcare settings. Her influential textbook on longitudinal data analysis with Garrett Fitzmaurice and Jim Ware has educated generations of biostatisticians, while her work on family-based association studies and the FBAT software has advanced the field of statistical genetics. According to Google Scholar, her research has accumulated over 111,000 citations, reflecting the profound impact of her methodological innovations across multiple scientific domains.
Beyond her methodological contributions, Dr. Laird has profoundly influenced the biostatistical community through extensive mentorship, having guided more than thirty doctoral and postdoctoral fellows who now lead research efforts at institutions worldwide. She has served on numerous national committees, including the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Cabin Air Quality, which recommended the ban on smoking in airplanes, demonstrating how statistical expertise can inform critical public health policy. Her exceptional contributions were recognized with the prestigious International Prize in Statistics in 2021, honoring her work on longitudinal data analysis with Jim Ware, along with the Samuel S. Wilks Award from the American Statistical Association in 2011 and the Marvin Zelen Award for Leadership in the Statistical Sciences in 2015. Even following her retirement in 2015, Dr. Laird continues to contribute to the field through her emeritus role, maintaining an active research agenda that continues to shape biostatistical methodology and its application to complex health challenges.
