Born 1955, Swiss nationality.

Education

1979

Diploma in mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich , (Polya Prize)

1982

PhD degree in mathematics with a thesis in statistics, ETH Zurich
adviser: Prof. F.R. Hampel, ETH Zurich
co-referees: Prof. I. Olkin, Stanford University (USA), Prof. C. Field, Dalhousie University, Halifax (Canada)

Employment

March 1983 - August 1983

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computing Science, Dalhousie University , Halifax (Canada)

1983 - 1986

Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, Princeton University (USA)

1986 - 2013

Professor of Statistics, Department of Econometrics, University of Geneva (Switzerland)

2014 - present

Professor of Statistics, Research Center for Statistics and Geneva School of Economics and Management, University of Geneva (Switzerland)

1996 - 2012

Professor of Statistics, Faculty of Economics, University of Lugano (Switzerland) (20%)

Affiliations

American Statistical Association (elected Fellow 2001)

International Statistical Institute (elected member 2008), Bernoulli Society

Institute of Mathematical Statistics

Swiss Statistical Association (Vice-president, 1988-91)

Languages

Short Term Visiting Positions

October 19 - 23, 1981

Invited Lecturer, Stefan Banach International Mathematical Center, Warsaw (Poland)

May 15 - 27, 1983

Invited Lecturer, Mathematical Institute, University of Oslo (Norway)

July 9 - August 11, 1984

Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, Stanford University (USA)

March 23 - April 16, 1987

Visiting Professor, Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche, University of Perugia(Italy)

July 30 - August 16, 1987

Visiting Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Washington, Seattle (USA)

July 18 - September 10, 1988

Visiting Professor, Department of Statistics, La Trobe University, Melbourne (Australia)

July 10 - August 4, 1989

Visiting Fellow, Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, Minneapolis, Minnesota (USA)

November 7 - December 18, 1992

Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical Sciences and Department of Statistics, Australian National University, Canberra

January 31 - March 30, 1993

Visiting Scholar, Department of Statistics, Stanford University (USA)

May 23 - June 6, 1993

Visiting Professor, Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computing Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax (Canada)

July 4 - 31, 1996

Visiting Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney (Australia)

May 4 - 10, 1997

Visiting Professor, Faculte des Sciences Economiques et de Gestion, University of Tunis (Tunisia)

April 3 - 18, 1999

Visiting Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney (Australia)

May 1 - June 3, 2000

Visiting Scholar, Dept. of Mathematics, MIT, Cambridge MA (USA)

August 1-31, 2000

Visiting Scholar, Department of Statistical Science, La Trobe University, Melbourne (Australia)

May 23 - 24, 2002

Visiting Member, The Fields Institute For Research in Mathematical Sciences, Toronto (Canada)

August 24-30, 2003

Visiting Scholar, Forschungsinstitut fuer Mathematik, ETH Zuerich (Switzerland)

April 25-30, 2004

Visiting Scholar, Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague (Czech Republic)

March 15 - April 8, 2005

Visiting Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney (Australia)

November 1 - December 2, 2007

Visiting Fellow, Centre for Mathematics and its Applications, Australian National University, Canberra (Australia)

December 3 - 16, 2007

Visiting Research Fellow, Division of Statistics, George Institute for International Health, University of Sydney (Australia)

February 1 - March 1, 2008

Visiting Professor, Dept. of Operations Research and Financial Engineering, Princeton University (USA)

January 26 - February 14, 2009

Visitor, Dept. of Statistics, Texas A&M University, College Station (USA)

May 31 - June 15, 2013

Visiting Academic, Dept. of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash University, Melbourne (Australia)

September 8 - 12, 2014

Visiting Fellow, Mathematical Sciences Institute, Australian National University, Canberra (Australia)

Main Appointments

Director Undergraduate Studies, Department of Statistics, Princeton University, 1984-86.

Chair, Department of Econometrics, University of Geneva, 2001-07.

Director Master of Science in Statistics, University of Geneva, 2008-12.

Director PhD Program in Statistics, University of Geneva, 2009-present.

Director Research Center for Statistics, University of Geneva, 2014-present.

Associate Editor, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 2005-present.

Member of the Scientific Board, Advanced School in Economics, University of Venezia (Italy), 2007-11.

External expert, Research Assessment Exercise, Australian National University, Canberra (Australia), 2010.

External expert, Faculty Selection, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol (Cyprus), 2010.

External expert Panel 13 (Economics, Statistics), National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes, Italy, 2012-13 and 2015-16.

External expert, Faculty tenure, HEC, University of Lausanne, (Switzerland), 2014.

External expert, Faculty selection, Universita` Cattolica, Milano (Italy), 2014.

External expert, Faculty selection, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne (Switzerland), 2015.

Member of the Swiss Federal Committee on Motor Vehicles Insurance, 1987-92.

Member of the Executive Council HEC Geneva, University of Geneva, 1987-89, 1991-92.

Associate Expert, Europe-China Management Improvement Foundation, 2002-present.

Member of the Program Committee, 1987 Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association and the Insitute of Mathematical Statistics, San Francisco, CA.

Organizer of the session on "Large Deviations and Approximations for Small Samples", 19th European Meeting of Statisticians, Barcelona, September 2-6, 1991.

Member of the Program Committee of the 22nd European Meeting of Statisticians, Vilnius, Lithuania, August 12-18, 1998.

Member of the Scientific Committee of the International Conferences on "Robust Statistics", 2001 (Vorau, Austria), 2002 (Vancouver, Canada), 2003 (Antwerp, Belgium), 2006 (Lisbon, Portugal), 2007 (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 2008 (Antalya, Turkey), 2010 (Prague, Czech Republic), 2011 (Valladolid, Spain), 2013 (St. Petersburg, Russia), 2015 (Kolkata, India), 2016 (Chair, Geneva, Switzerland).

Organizer of the session on "Robust Inference and Model Building", International Statistical Institute Meeting, Seoul, Korea, August 22-29, 2001.

Organizer of the session on "Small Sample Inference", International Conference on Current Advances and Trends in Nonparametric Statistics, Crete, Greece, July 15-19, 2002.

Organizer of the session on "Recent Developments in Robust Statistics", Institute of Mathematical Statistics 65th Annual Meeting, Banff, Canada, July 28-31, 2002.

Organizer of the session on "Robust Statistics", 9th Vilnius Conference on Probability and Statistics, Vilnius, Lithuania, June 26-July 2, 2006.

Member of the Scientific Committee of the International Workshop "Computational and Financial Econometrics", Geneva, Switzerland, April 20-22, 2007.

Member of the Scientific Committee of the "5th International Conference on Computing & Statistics (ERCIM 2012)", Oviedo, Spain, December 1-3, 2012.

Co-chair of the 7th ERCIM 2013 Conference on "Computational and Methodological Statistics", London, December 14-16, 2013.

Member of the Scientific Committee of the "5th IASC World Conference and the 21st International Conference on Computational Statistics (COMPSTAT 2014)", Geneva, Switzerland, August 19-22, 2014.

Research Interests

Robust statistics

Small sample asymptotics; saddlepoint methods; empirical likelihood

Estimation and inference in latent variable models

Main Consulting Projects

Statistical design of 3 experiments (ES 031) for 3 Spacelab missions, in collaboration with the Department of Biochemistry of the ETH Zrich (Prof. A. Cogoli, 1983).

MonteShell, Milano (1989)

Evaluation permanente des patients admis en Centre de Traitements et de Radaptation (Canton Vaud) (1995-96)

EDF, Paris (2007)