Nan Laird

Nan M. Laird
Born	(1943-09-18) September 18, 1943
Alma mater	Harvard University
Known for	Expectation-maximization algorithm, DerSimonian-Laird estimator
Awards	Fellow of the American Statistical Association, Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics
Scientific career
Institutions	Harvard School of Public Health
Thesis	Log-linear models with random parameters: an empirical Bayes approach  (1975)
Doctoral advisor	Arthur P. Dempster

Nan McKenzie Laird (born September 18, 1943) is a professor in Biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health. She served as Chair of the Department from 1990 to 1999. She was the Henry Pickering Walcott Professor of Biostatistics from 1991 to 1999. Laird is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, as well as the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. She is a member of the International Statistical Institute.

Research

Laird received her PhD from Harvard University in 1975 under Arthur Dempster.

Laird is well known for many seminal papers in biostatistics applications and methods, including the Expectation-maximization algorithm. She is a highly cited author according to the ISI Web of Knowledge.

Honors

Her honors include the Purdue University Myra Samuels Lecturer award (2004), the Janet L. Norwood Award (2003) and F.N. David Award (2001) from the American Statistical Association, and several other fellowships.

Selected publications

• Dempster, A. P.; Laird, N.; Rubin, D. B. (1977), "Maximum likelihood from incomplete data via the EM algorithm", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 39 (1): 1–38, JSTOR 2984875
• DerSimonian, R.; Laird, N. (1986), "Meta-analysis in clinical trials", Controlled Clinical Trials, 7 (3): 177–188, doi:10.1016/0197-2456(86)90046-2, PMID 3802833

External links

• Nan Laird at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Nan Laird at Harvard School of Public Health
• Nan Laird at ISI Web of Knowledge