Appendix F
Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff
THOMAS A. LOUIS (Chair) is professor of biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His statistical research focuses on Bayesian methods; applied areas include biomedicine, the environment, and public policy. He is coordinating editor of The Journal of the American Statistical Association, a member of the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT), on the board of the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) 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, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. From 1987 to 1999 he headed the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Minnesota. He has a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from Columbia University.
MARIA ALEJANDRO (Project Assistant) is a staff member of the Committee on National Statistics. She is currently working on projects on the design of nonmarket accounts, cost of living index, and confidentiality and data access. Previously, she worked at University of California, San Francisco, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Bridge project.
GORDON 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 coverage assessment and estimation in censuses, and in the management of data quality in statistical agencies. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He has B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in statistics from the London School of Economics.
VIRGINIA A. de WOLF (Study Director) was, during the course of this study, a senior program officer on the staff of the Committee on National Statistics. 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. Her areas of research interest are confidentiality and data access as well as statistical policy. 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). 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.
THOMAS A. DOWNES is associate professor of economics at Tufts University. His research focuses in part on the evaluation and construction of state and local policies to improve the delivery of publicly provided goods and to reduce inequities in the delivery of these services, with particular attention paid to public education. He has also pursued research that considers the roles of the public and private sectors in the provision of education. He has advised policy makers in several states; an example of this advisory work is his contribution to Educational Finance to Support High Learning Standards, the final report of a symposium sponsored by the New York State Board of Regents. He has a B.A. from Bowdoin College (1982) and a Ph.D. from Stanford University (1988).
LINDA GAGE is the liaison to demographic programs at the California Department of Finance. She represents California in federal and profes-
sional forums and evaluates the effect of various demographic and statistical programs on the state. Previously, she served as the California state demographer for two decades and in other positions within the Department of Finance since 1975. She is a member of the American Statistical Association, the Population Association of America, and the National State Data Center Program Steering Committee. She has served on the U.S. Secretary of Commerce’s Decennial Advisory Committee since 1995. She has B.A. and M.A. degrees in sociology, with emphasis in demography, from the University of California, Davis.
MARISA A. GERSTEIN (Research Assistant) is a staff member of the Committee on National Statistics. She is currently working on projects on methods for measuring discrimination, nonmarket accounts, and elder abuse and neglect. Previously, she worked at Burch Munford Direct, a direct mail company, and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. She has a B.A. in sociology from New College of Florida.
HERMANN HABERMANN is director of the United Nations Statistics Division. In this position, he has the responsibility of providing leadership and coordination in the development of international statistical standards, technical cooperation, methodological work and in data collection activities. Previously, he held positions as chief statistician and deputy associate director for budget in the Office of Management and Budget. In addition to his statistical experience and knowledge, he has extensive knowledge of the federal statistical system. He has a B.S. from the Pratt Institute and 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.
CHRISTOPHER MACKIE is a program officer with the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT). In addition to working with this panel, he is working on projects involving nonmarket economic accounting and data access and confidentiality. He was study director for the CNSTAT panel that produced At What Price: Conceptualizing and Measuring Cost-of-Living and Price Indexes. Prior to joining CNSTAT, he was a senior economist with SAG Corporation, where he conducted a variety of econometric studies in the areas of labor and personnel economics, primarily for federal agencies. He has held teaching positions at the University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University, and Tulane University. He is author of Canonizing Economic Theory. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina.
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 and training 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.
BRUCE D. SPENCER is a professor of statistics and faculty fellow in the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. His interests include the interactions between statistics and policy, demographic statistics, and sampling. 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