David Madigan Appointed Executive Vice President and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

David Madigan Appointed Executive Vice President and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

September 3, 2013

Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:

I am pleased to announce that I have appointed Professor David Madigan as our Executive Vice President and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, a role he has ably assumed on an interim basis since this past March.

David joined Columbia’s faculty in 2007 and the following year became Chair of the Department of Statistics, where he has shown great dedication to broadly improving the intellectual life of faculty and students.  He serves on the Executive Committee of the Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering, and chairs both the Provost’s Faculty Committee on Online Learning and the Shared Research Computing Policy Advisory Committee.  A proponent of the highest quality digital learning, he has helped lead Columbia’s effort to offer online versions of the MA in Statistics and the MS in Actuarial Science. 

David’s highly regarded scholarship in statistics is distinguished by a combination of creativity and practicality, making possible the successful use of large data sets in addressing challenges such as helping doctors to predict the side effects of prescribed drugs and gaining insights about the future course of illnesses based on large samples of patient outcomes.  He received his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Trinity College, Dublin and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In his important new leadership role, David will be called on to sustain and further strengthen Columbia’s academic excellence, expand our interdisciplinary programs, and make this core academic community of Arts and Sciences even more diverse.  Having seen his effectiveness in recent months working on an interim basis, I am confident he will succeed on each front. 

There was an extensive search to fill this critical role.  The search committee was composed of fifteen members.  The majority were selected, in consultation with me, by the Policy and Planning Committee of the Arts and Sciences.  I want to extend a special thank you to this group and its chair, Professor Robert Jervis, for their exemplary work in the search for our new Executive Vice President and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.  For the present, please join me in congratulating David Madigan and wishing him all the best in his new responsibilities at the University.

Sincerely,

Lee C. Bollinger