UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Jerry Reiter, dean of the natural sciences and professor of statistical science at Duke University, will present the 2022 Clifford C. Clogg Memorial Lecture on Nov. 3 on Penn State's University Park campus.

Sponsored by the departments of statistics and sociology, the lecture series includes a free public lecture intended for a general audience, this year titled “Is There a Future for Public Use Data?” Reiter’s lecture will take place from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 3, in 201 Thomas Building.

Reiter participates in both applied and methodological research in statistical science. He is most interested in applications involving social science and public policy, although he enjoys working with researchers in all disciplines. His methodological research focuses mainly on statistical methods for protecting data confidentiality, for handling missing data, for combining information from multiple data sources, and for modeling complex data including methods for causal inferences.

Reiter has authored or co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed and invited publications and given more than 160 conference and university presentations. He has received several teaching awards at Duke University, including the Mrs. Alexander Hehmeyer Professor of Statistical Science, the Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award, the Outstanding Postdoc Mentor Award, and the inaugural Distinguished Faculty Award for the Duke Master's in Interdisciplinary Data Science Program. Reiter was named a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2020 and a fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2011.

Reiter was the principal investigator of the Triangle Census Research Network, a research center funded by the National Science Foundation to improve the practice of data dissemination among federal statistical agencies. Until July 2019, he was the deputy director of the Information Initiative at Duke, an institute dedicated to research and applications in the analysis of large-scale (and not large-scale) data. Reiter was appointed the chair of the Department of Statistical Science in 2019 before stepping down to serve as the interim dean of natural sciences for the 2022 academic year. He also is a part-time employee of the U.S. Census Bureau, helping to modernize data privacy protection practices.

The Clifford C. Clogg Memorial Lecture honors a researcher who has made distinguished contributions at the intersection of statistics and social science. It honors the late Clifford C. Clogg, a distinguished professor of sociology and professor of statistics at Penn State from 1979 to 1995. Clogg made numerous contributions to statistics and social science with seminal works in latent class models, with a particular focus on addressing questions in sociology. He was a fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also provided editorial service to several journals, contributed his expertise to numerous associations and review boards, and supervised master's and doctoral students while balancing his responsibilities to his two departments at Penn State. The lecture series was created in 1996, when funds contributed by colleagues and friends were used to establish an endowment for its support.