Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff
Benjamin F. King (Chair) is a private statistical consultant, having retired in 1997 as professor of decision sciences at Florida Atlantic University. During his academic career he held tenured faculty positions in the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago and in both the School of Business Administration and the Department of Statistics at the University of Washington. In addition, he was director of survey methods at the Educational Testing Service. His research interests include survey sampling, Bayesian methods, and general applications of statistics to problems of business, public policy, and the law. A fellow of the American Statistical Association and elected member of the International Statistical Institute, he received his A.B., M.B.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He has served on three previous panels of the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT).
David A. Binder is director general of the Methodology Branch at Statistics Canada, where he has held several positions since 1971. He is a past member of the Census Advisory Committee of Professional Associations (American Statistical Association subcommittee). His research interests include methods for treating nonresponse in surveys, variance estimation, innovation in government surveys, data analysis for complex surveys, and
confidentiality of survey data. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He received his B.Sc. from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. from Imperial College of Science and Technology.
Michael L. Cohen is a senior program officer for the Committee on National Statistics, currently serving as co-study director for the Panel on Research on Future Census Methods and staff for the Panel to Review the 2000 Census. He previously assisted the Panel on Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas and directed the Panel on Statistical Methods for Testing and Evaluating Defense Systems. Formerly, he was a mathematical statistician at the Energy Information Administration, an assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland, and a visiting lecturer in statistics at Princeton University. His general area of research is the use of statistics in public policy, with particular interest in census undercount, model validation, and robust estimation. A fellow of the American Statistical Association, he received a B.S. degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in statistics from Stanford University.
Daniel L. Cork is a program officer for the Committee on National Statistics, currently serving as co-study director of the Panel on Research on Future Census Methods and assisting the Panel to Review the 2000 Census. His research interests include quantitative criminology (particularly space-time dynamics in homicide), Bayesian statistics, and statistics in sports. He holds a B.S. degree in statistics from George Washington University and an M.S. in statistics and a joint Ph.D. in statistics and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University.
Mick P. Couper is a senior associate research scientist in the Survey Methodology Program in the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan, an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan, and a research associate professor in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland, College Park. He
previously worked at the Census Bureau as a visiting researcher from 1992 to 1994. He has published in the areas of survey and census nonresponse and the use of computer technology for data collection. He received an M.Soc.Sc. from the University of Cape Town, an M.A. in Applied Social Research from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in sociology from Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa.
Shoreh Elhami (consultant) is the geographic information systems (GIS) director for the Delaware County, Ohio, Auditor’s DALIS (Delaware Appraisal Land Information System) Project. Her involvement in census-related projects goes back to the 1990 census, when she became involved with the postcensus review process. From 1997 to 2000, as the county’s census liaison, she orchestrated all Census 2000 related activities. She has more than 12 years of experience in the GIS field and is the principal architect of the DALIS Project’s GIS, which was the primary resource used for the Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA) in the county. Under her direction, the DALIS Project has received Ohio’s Best GIS Practices Award from the Ohio Geographically Referenced Information Program in 1998 as well as the Environmental Systems Research Institute’s Special Achievement Award in 2000. Elhami frequently speaks at national and international GIS conferences and is the past president of the Ohio Chapter of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association. She served as a member of the LUCA Working Group jointly commissioned by the Panel to Review the 2000 Census and the Panel on Research on Future Census Methods. She is currently a member of the Mapping Science Committee of the National Research Council’s (NRC) Division on Earth and Life Sciences. She received an M.A. in city and regional planning from Ohio State University.
C.A. “Al” Irvine is a private consultant in San Diego, California. He has experience in many areas of software engineering and information management dating back to the late 1950s. His most relevant experience is with System Development Corporation (1968–1970), NCR Corporation (1970–1973), as a co-founder of SofTech Microsystems (1979–1984), and as founder of Eclectic
Solutions (1984–present). He has consulted for IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, Bank of America, ITT, Alcoa, NEC, Toshiba, and General Motors. He served as a panel member of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) Committee to Review the Tax Systems Modernization of the Internal Revenue Service.
Sallie Keller-McNulty is group leader for the Statistical Sciences Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Prior to her move to Los Alamos, she was professor and director of graduate studies at the Department of Statistics, Kansas State University, where she had been on the faculty since 1985. She spent two years (1994–1996) as program director of Statistics and Probability, Division of Mathematical Sciences, National Science Foundation. She is an expert in the area of data access and confidentiality and currently serves on a National Research Council CSTB committee that is studying information technology and federal services. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and received the association’s Founders’ Award in 2002. She received her Ph.D. in statistics from Iowa State University.
George T. Ligler is a private consultant in Potomac, Maryland. He has extensive experience in information management and software and computer system engineering, as is evident from his work at Burroughs Corporation (1980–1982), Computer Sciences Corporation (1984–1988), and at GTL Associates, a private company that he founded. Most recently, he was a panel member of the CSTB Committee to Review the Tax Systems Modernization of the Internal Revenue Service. A Rhodes scholar, he received his B.S. in mathematics from Furman University in 1971 and his M.Sc. and D.Phil. from Oxford University.
Michael M. Meyer is chief scientist at Intelligent Results, Inc., a software company in Seattle, Washington. Previously, he held mathematics and engineering analyst positions at the Boeing Company and at Amazon.com. He has also served as senior research scientist in the Departments of Statistics and of Academic Computing and Media at Carnegie Mellon University, and held an academic appointment in the Department of Statistics
at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In 1991–1992, on a part-time basis, he served as the study director for the CNSTAT Panel to Review Evaluation Studies of Bilingual Education. His research interests include statistical computing and categorical data analysis. A fellow of the American Statistical Association, he received a B.A. (with honors) in mathematics from the University of Western Australia and a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Minnesota.
Keith F. Rustis vice president and associate director at Westat, Inc. He is also a research associate professor in the Joint Program on Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland. He was formerly with the Australian Bureau of Statistics. He was a member of the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council (1992–1998). He has extensive experience in sampling methods, the design and specification of large-scale sample surveys, and analysis of survey data. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and a member of the International Statistical Institute. He served as a member of the NRC Panel to Evaluate Alternative Census Methodologies and as chair of the NRC Panel on Alternative Census Methods. He received a Ph.D. in biostatistics from the University of Michigan.
Joseph J. Salvo is director of the Population Division at the New York City Department of City Planning. He was previously deputy director and senior demographer. He worked at the U.S. Census Bureau in 1981–1982. He has broad experience in immigration, the application of small-area data for policies and programs, and the use of census data. A past president of the Association of Public Data Users, he has experience working with MAF/TIGER and the American Community Survey. Salvo chaired the Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA) working group jointly sponsored by the Panel to Review the 2000 Census and the Panel on Research on Future Census Methods. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Fordham University.
Joseph L. Schafer is associate professor of statistics at Pennsylvania State University. He was at the Census Bureau in the Statistical Support Division (1989–1991), and at the Bureau of
Labor Statistics on an American Statistical Association/National Science Foundation (ASA/NSF) research fellowship (1997). His main area of research involves the analysis of incomplete data. He received his Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University.
Allen L. Schirm is a senior fellow and associate director at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. His principal research interests include census methods, small-area estimation, sample and evaluation design, and the use of administrative records and survey data for policy analysis and program evaluation in the areas of food and nutrition and education and training policy. He has served on the CNSTAT Panel on Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas and the Panel on Formula Allocations. He received an A.B. in statistics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Joseph H. Sedransk is professor of statistics at Case Western Reserve University. He has held previous tenured positions in the departments of statistics at Iowa State University, the University of Wisconsin, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the State University of New York at Albany, and the University of Iowa. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. Relevant to census methods, he served as an ASA/NSF fellow at the Census Bureau, and as a member of the ASA advisory committee to the Census Bureau. He received his B.S. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University.
C. Matthew Snipp is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University. He has written extensively on American Indians [American Indians: The First of the Land (1989), Research in Human Capital and Development: American Indian Economic Development (1996)], and he has written specifically on the interaction of American Indians and the U.S. Census [“American Indians” in Encyclopedia of the U.S. Census (2000)]. He serves or has served on the Technical Advisory Committee on Racial and Ethnic Statistics and the Native American Population Advisory Committee, both of the U.S. Census Bureau. He
also contributed a chapter on “The Size and Distribution of the American Indian Population: Fertility, Mortality, Residence, and Migration” in Changing Numbers, Changing Needs: American Indian Demography and Public Health, a 1996 publication of the National Research Council’s Committee on Population. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin.
Donald Ylvisaker is an emeritus professor of statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, having previously been on the faculties of Columbia University, New York University, and the University of Washington. His primary research interest is in the design of experiments; his applied interests have developed as a consulting statistician, frequently on legal matters. Relevant to census methods, he held a joint statistical agreement with the Census Bureau in 1990–1991 in which he reviewed the 1986 Test of Adjustment Related Operations (TARO); he served on the Advisory Panel to the Committee on Adjustment of Postcensal Estimates in 1992; and he was an associate editor of a special issue of the Journal of the American Statistical Association on census methods. A fellow of the American Statistical Association, he received his Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University.
Alan M. Zaslavsky is a professor in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. He has written extensively on issues concerning the decennial census, including weighting and administrative records. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. He has served on two Committee on National Statistics panels involving decennial census methodology—the Panel to Evaluate Alternative Census Methods (1992–1994) and the Panel on Alternative Census Methodologies (1995–1999)—as well as on the Panel on Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas (1996–2000). He also served on the Census Advisory Committee on Adjustment of Postcensal Estimates (1992). He received his M.S. degree in mathematics from Northeastern University and his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
