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Appendix B
Biographical Sketches of Panel Members andStaff
THOMAS A. LOUIS (Chair) is a senior statistical scientist at RAND and adjunct professor of biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. His research interests focus on Bayesian methods with applications in health, environmental, and public policy. He is coordinating editor of The Journal of the American Statistical Association, a member of the Committee on National Statistics, on the board of the Institute of Medicine's Medical Follow-up Agency, and on the executive committee of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences. He was on the IOM Panel to Assess the Health Consequences of Service in the Persian Gulf War and was on the CNSTAT Panel on Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from Columbia University and from 1987 to 1999 headed the department of Biostatistics at the University of Minnesota.
GORDON J. BRACKSTONE is assistant chief statistician responsible for statistical methodology, computing, and classification systems at Statistics Canada. From 1982 to 1985 he was the director-general of the Methodology Branch at Statistics Canada, and previously he was responsible for surveys and data acquisition in the Central Statistical Office of British Columbia. His professional work has been in survey methodology, particularly
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the assessment of the quality of census and survey data. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in statistics from the London School of Economics.
DANELLE J. DESSAINT (Project Assistant) is a staff member of the Committee on National Statistics. Her projects include ones on formula allocations, State Children's Health Insurance program, elder abuse, and institutional review boards. She has a B.A. in communications from Wingate University and formerly worked as an editor at Tribune Media Services in Glens Falls, NY.
VIRGINIA A. de WOLF (Study Director) is a senior program officer on the staff of the Committee on National Statistics. Previously, she has worked at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the U.S. General Accounting Office, and the University of Washington (Seattle). In the early 1990s she served as the study director of the panel that authored Private Lives and Public Policies: Confidentiality and Accessibility of Government Statistics. Currently, her areas of research interest are confidentiality and data access as well as statistical policy. She has a B.A. in mathematics from the College of New Rochelle and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington (Seattle) in educational psychology with emphases in statistics, measurement, and research design.
LINDA GAGE is California's state demographer and chief of the Demographic Research Unit at the California Department of Finance. She has held various positions within the Demographic Research Unit since 1975. Previously she held research and teaching assistant positions at the University of California. Her fields of demographic activity are in applied demography, small-area data analysis, migration, race/ethnicity, population estimates and projections, analysis of U.S. Census Bureau programs/procedures/data, fertility, and mortality. She has an M.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Davis, with emphasis in demography.
MARISA A. GERSTEIN (Research Assistant) is a staff member of the Committee on National Statistics. She is currently working on projects on welfare impacts, WIC, and elder abuse. Previously, she worked at Burch Munford Direct, a direct mail company, and the National Abortion and
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Reproductive Rights Action League. She has a B.A. in sociology from New College of the University of South Florida.
HERMANN HABERMANN is director of the Statistics Division for the United Nations. Previously, he was the deputy associate director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, where he also served as chief statistician. In addition to his knowledge of statistics, he brings to the committee his knowledge of the federal statistical system. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in statistics.
THOMAS B. JABINE is a statistical consultant who specializes in the areas of sampling, survey research methods, statistical disclosure analysis, and statistical policy. Recent clients include the Committee on National Statistics, the National Center for Health Statistics, and several other statistical agencies and organizations. He was formerly statistical policy expert for the Energy Information Administration, chief mathematical statistician for the Social Security Administration, and chief of the Statistical Research Division of the U.S. Census Bureau. He has provided technical assistance in sampling and survey methods to several developing countries for the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. His publications are primarily in the areas of sampling, survey methodology and statistical policy. He has a B.S. in mathematics and an M.S. in economics and science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
ALLEN L. SCHIRM is a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. Formerly, he was Andrew W. Mellon assistant research scientist and assistant professor at the University of Michigan. His principal research interests include small-area estimation, census methods, and sample and evaluation design, with application to studies of child well-being and welfare, food and nutrition, and education policy. He is currently an Associate Editor of Evaluation Review. He served on the Committee on National Statistics Panel on Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas and is currently a member of its Panel on Research on Future Census Methods. He is a member of the American Statistical Association's Section on Survey Research Methods Working Group on Technical Aspects of the Survey of Income and Program Participation. He has an A.B. in statistics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
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BRUCE D. SPENCER is a professor of statistics at Northwestern University. He chaired the Statistics Department at Northwestern from 1988 to 1999 and 2000 to 2001. He directed the Methodology Research Center of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago from 1985 to 1992. From 1992 to 1994 he was a senior research statistician at NORC. At the National Research Council he was a panel member with the Mathematical Sciences Assessment Panel, and the Panel on Statistical Issues in AIDS Research. He served as study director for the Panel on Small Area Estimates of Population and Income. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University.
