Telba Zalkind Irony is a Brazilian

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 ...

operations research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...

er, and proponent of

Bayesian statistics Bayesian statistics is a theory in the field of statistics based on the Bayesian interpretation of probability where probability expresses a ''degree of belief'' in an event. The degree of belief may be based on prior knowledge about the event, ...

. She works at the

Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respon ...

, where she was formerly chief of biostatistics at the Office of Device Evaluation and is now deputy directory of biostatistics and epidemiology at the

Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research The Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) is one of six main centers for the Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The current Dir ...

. Irony was born in

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...

, and studied physics and statistics at the

University of São Paulo The University of São Paulo ( pt, Universidade de São Paulo, USP) is a public university in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. It is the largest Brazilian public university and the country's most prestigious educational institution, the best ...

, earning both a bachelor's degree and master's degree there. She obtained her Ph.D. in industrial engineering and operations research in 1989 from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

with a dissertation ''Modeling, Information Extraction and Decision Making a Bayesian Approach to Some Engineering Problems'' supervised by

Richard E. Barlow Richard Eugene Barlow (born January 12, 1931) is an American mathematician and mathematical statistician, who is considered with Frank Proschan as the founder of modern reliability theory. He was a professor at the University of California, Berke ...

. Before joining the FDA, she was part of the operations research department at

George Washington University , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , preside ...

. In 2010, she became 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 ...

. In 2014, she won the Excellence in Analytical Science Award of the Food and Drug Administration "for spearheading innovative regulatory science studies, culminating in the release of novel guidance documents; supporting complex policy decision-making; and changing the submission review paradigm".

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American statisticians Brazilian statisticians Women statisticians University of São Paulo alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni George Washington University faculty Fellows of the American Statistical Association {{Statistician-stub