dr branislav vidakovic professor and head of the department of statistics at texas a&m university has been elected as a member of the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine (nasem) committee on applied and theoretical statistics (cats) vidakovic is one of roughly two dozen members of cats originally established in 1978 to advise stakeholders in government academia industry and nonprofit organizations on statistics and data science as a standing committee of the board on mathematical sciences and analytics cats helps connect the frontiers of statistics and data science research education training and practice to issues of national and global importance by convening workshops consensus studies and other activities vidakovic will serve through june 2024 on the committee which is sponsored by the national science foundation (nsf) and currently chaired by texas a&m industrial and systems engineering doctoral student and 2020 nasem christine mirzayan science and technology policy fellow brittany a segundo 18 vidakovic joined the texas a&m faculty in august 2020 as head of texas a&m statistics and the inaugural holder of the ho hartley chair in statistics after completing a two-year sabbatical appointment as program director for statistics in the nsf division of mathematical and physical sciences prior to that he spent 20 years on faculty at the georgia institute of technology where he was a professor in the h milton stewart school of industrial and systems engineering and the wallace h coulter department of biomedical engineering as well as a courtesy professor in the school of biology he also held an adjunct professor appointment in the department of biostatistics and bioinformatics within the rollins school of public health at emory university a fellow of the american statistical association vidakovic is an elected member of the international statistical institute and a member of the institute of mathematical statistics international society for bayesian analysis and institute of industrial and system engineers his research interests include bayesian statistics statistical modeling in wavelet domains and statistical analysis of signals and image processing along with geoscientific and biomedical statistical applications in addition to more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in statistics and applied mathematics publications vidakovic has written 10 books equally accomplished in the classroom he has taught in excess of 40 different undergraduate and graduate statistics courses while advising nearly two dozen doctoral and masters students vidakovic earned his phd in statistics from purdue university in 1992 after receiving both bachelors and masters of science degrees in mathematics from belgrade university in serbia he was an assistant and associate professor of statistics at duke university for eight years prior to joining the georgia tech faculty in 2000 and also held previous visiting positions at the university of north carolina and universidad politecnica de madrid the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine are the nations preeminent source of high-quality objective advice on science engineering and health matters learn more about cats or additional examples of nasem-related work find additional information about vidakovics teaching research and service at texas a&m # # # # # # # # # # about research at texas a&m university: as one of the worlds leading research institutions texas a&m is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery including in science and technology research conducted at texas a&m generated annual expenditures of more than $113 billion in fiscal year 2020 and ranked 14th in the national science foundations higher education research and development survey texas a&ms research creates new knowledge that provides basic fundamental and applied contributions resulting in many cases in economic benefits to the state nation and world to learn more visit research@texas a&m