Gerda Claeskens is a Belgian

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

. She is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

of statistics in the Faculty of Economics and Business at

KU Leuven KU Leuven (or Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is a Catholic research university in the city of Leuven, Belgium. It conducts teaching, research, and services in computer science, engineering, natural sciences, theology, humanities, medicine, l ...

, associated with the KU Research Centre for Operations Research and Business Statistics (ORSTAT).

Contributions

Claeskens is an expert in

nonparametric statistics Nonparametric statistics is the branch of statistics that is not based solely on parametrized families of probability distributions (common examples of parameters are the mean and variance). Nonparametric statistics is based on either being distr ...

and in

model selection Model selection is the task of selecting a statistical model from a set of candidate models, given data. In the simplest cases, a pre-existing set of data is considered. However, the task can also involve the design of experiments such that the ...

, including model averaging. She is known for developing, with

Nils Lid Hjort Nils Lid Hjort (born 12 January 1953) is a Norwegian statistician, who has been a professor of mathematical statistics at the University of Oslo since 1991. Hjort's research themes are varied, with particularly noteworthy contributions in the fie ...

, the

focused information criterion In statistics, the focused information criterion (FIC) is a method for selecting the most appropriate model among a set of competitors for a given data set. Unlike most other model selection strategies, like the Akaike information criterion (AIC), ...

for model selection. With Hjort, she is the author of the book ''Model Selection and Model Averaging'' (

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press A university press is an academic publishing hou ...

, 2008).

Education and career

Claeskens earned a licentiate in mathematics at the

University of Antwerp The University of Antwerp ( nl, Universiteit Antwerpen) is a major Belgian university located in the city of Antwerp. The official abbreviation is ''UA'', but ''UAntwerpen'' is more recently used. The University of Antwerp has about 20,000 stud ...

in 1995. In 1999, she earned a master's degree in

biostatistics Biostatistics (also known as biometry) are the development and application of statistical methods to a wide range of topics in biology. It encompasses the design of biological experiments, the collection and analysis of data from those experime ...

and Ph.D. in mathematics, at Limburgs Universitair Centrum (now the University of Hasselt); her dissertation, supervised by Marc Aerts, was ''Smoothing Techniques and Bootstrap Methods for Multiparameter Likelihood''. She did postdoctoral research at the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...

. Afterwards, she was an assistant professor at the

Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven), abbr. TU/e, is a public technical university in the Netherlands, located in the city of Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its BSc a ...

(from 1999 to 2000) and at

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

(from 2000 to 2004). She joined the KU Leuven faculty in 2004, and was promoted to full professor there in 2012.

Recognition

In 2004, Claeskens won the Noether Young Scholar Award of the

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest continuousl ...

. She is an elected member of the

International Statistical Institute The International Statistical Institute (ISI) is a professional association of statisticians. It was founded in 1885, although there had been international statistical congresses since 1853. The institute has about 4,000 elected members from gov ...

. In 2012 she was elected as a Fellow of the

Institute of Mathematical Statistics The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts o ...

, and in 2016 she was a Medallion Lecturer for the Institute, speaking about her work on model selection and model averaging. In 2019 she was elected as a

Fellow of the American Statistical Association Like many other academic professional societies, the American Statistical Association (ASA) uses the title of Fellow of the American Statistical Association as its highest honorary grade of membership. The number of new fellows per year is limited ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Claeskens, Gerda Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Belgian statisticians Women statisticians University of Antwerp alumni Academic staff of the Eindhoven University of Technology Texas A&M University faculty Academic staff of KU Leuven Elected Members of the International Statistical Institute Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Fellows of the American Statistical Association