A biostatistics professor was appointed the interim dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and will begin his term early November.
Ronald S. Brookmeyer will begin his term Nov. 1, a university press release announced Monday. Scott Waugh, UCLA executive vice chancellor and provost, said in an email statement that he and Chancellor Gene Block are confident that Brookmeyer will lead the school well as interim dean.
Brookmeyer joined UCLA in 2010 as a biostatistics professor. He received his master’s and doctorate in statistics from the University of Wisconsin in 1977 and 1980, respectively.
This is not Brookmeyer’s first time leading a university’s public health program. Before working at UCLA, he served as the director of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s interdepartmental Master of Public Health program.
Brookmeyer has conducted research on HIV/AIDS since the 1980s and used biostatistics to predict the severity of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, according to the press release.
Brookmeyer received multiple awards and honors for his work such as the American Public Health Association’s Mortimer Spiegelman Gold Medal in health statistics, the American Statistical Association’s Nathan Mantel Lifetime Achievement Award and Karl E. Peace Award for outstanding statistical contributions for the betterment of society, according to the release.