About the Center for Data Analysis and Statistical Science

Education

The Center for Data Analysis and Statistical Science of Ghent University is a formal UGent expert center uniting the several statistics research centers from the different UGent faculties. The Center for Statistics aims to disseminate expert statistical knowledge through education and consulting.

    In 2001, the Ghent Center for Data Analysis and Statistical Science joined the Academy for Lifelong Learning of the Faculty of Sciences (ICES) to organize their yearly series of targeted training modules.

    An inter-university training network FLAMES (Flanders' Training Network for Methodology and Statistics) was established in 2013 providing statistical training for doctoral students.

    In 2015, the 10th anniversary of the Master of Statistical Data Analysis was celebrated. Since 2016, the program has been restructured to two major tracks, a major Statistical Science and a major Computational Statistics.

    Consulting

    The center also coordinates a statistical support service FIRE (Fostering Innovative Research based on Evidence) for UGent PhD students.

    Stat-Gent CRESCENDO (CREdible SCientific Evidence for New Discoveries and Outcomes) resulted from a consortium of the industrial research fund. An initiative to turn academic expertise into added value for industry and society. Stat-Gent Consultancy as it is called today, offers consultancy about statistics and data-analysis to professionals from the academic, public and the private sector. Its members cover a wide range of experience in different areas of application with a variety of statistical techniques and data-analytic tools. Each project is managed by one of the consultants and supervised by an UGent professor.

    Meet the team of consultants

    Dries.JPGAfter obtaining a Master’s degree in Physics, a Master in Statistical Data Analysis provided Dries Reynders an even broader field to model and explore reality with mathematical tools. His main area of expertise are clinical trials, survival analysis and causal inference of observational data. 






    Emmanuel AbatihEmmanuel Abatih has Masters in Applied Statistics, Biostatistics and Statistical Bio-informatics all from Hasselt University (Belgium). His PhD, obtained in Denmark, was on the application of statistical methods in the field of Veterinary Epidemiology. He has broad teaching and consulting experience in statistics. His main areas of expertise are risk analysis, statistical modelling of multivariate data and software training in R, SAS and STATA.





    Limin.JPGLimin Liu, a Shanghai city native, studied social work and sociology in Beijing and Berlin. After finishing her doctoral dissertation on the educational inequality in the access to elite higher education, she relocated to Europe and continued her study in the field of sociology of education in Germany and Belgium successively. Upon her empirical research experience in sociology, she accomplished the ManaMa training in Statistical Data Analysis at Ghent University. Now she is a statistician with social science background and is interested in both quantitative and qualitative methods.

    Robrecht Dockx is a versatile professional equipped with a Master's in Statistical Sciences and a veterinary degree from Ghent University. Following the completion of his PhD in health sciences, he transitioned from a postdoctoral researcher role at the Biometrics Department of Veterinary Medicine to a position as a statistical consultant in the private sector. This trajectory eventually led him to become a consultant at the Center for Data Analysis and Statistical Science in Ghent. His unwavering dedication to animal welfare, coupled with his proficiency in experimental design, underscores his commitment to innovative problem-solving and the advancement of research.

    The team is supported by expert supervisors:

    • Prof. Dries Benoit
    • Prof. Els Goetghebeur – Director
    • Prof. Jan De Neve
    • Prof. Luc Duchateau
    • Prof. Ronan Van Rossem
    • Prof. Stijn Vansteelandt
    • Prof. Yves Rosseel

    Seminars

    Two series of seminars are organized on regular basis: statistical lectures known as Quetelet seminars, and Nightingale seminars where findings of a particular study are presented from both a domain expert and a statistician.

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