27 Many professors have long, rewarding careers. Few have taught in or instructed students from as many places as statistics professor Ibrahim “Abe” Ahmad. He’s an ambassador for statistics. “It makes sense,” says Ahmad, one of three College of Arts and Sciences instructors promoted to Regents Professor in 2010. “I grew up in an international neighborhood of Suez, Egypt, near the canal.” From the top floor of his family’s house, he could watch ships pass by in the canal. His father ran a family construction company in Suez and Ismailia. Most of his siblings went into engineering. His mother wanted him to be a doctor. He decided to be the black sheep of the family, he says. “I went to Cairo University’s economics and statistics program thinking I’d become an ambassador,” Ahmad says. “They were just starting it at Cairo, which was an elite college. I ended up being the first and youngest graduate of the college’s first year, 1965.” He was a graduate assistant for Carl Marshall, a visiting professor from OSU, who encouraged Ahmad to attend graduate school at OSU. Ahmad decided on Florida State University because he had family there. He finished his doctoral degree in 1973 and was hired at FSU as an instructor and researcher. A Statistics Ambassador From a child watching ships pass on the Suez Canal to a Regents Professor in an OSU classroom, Ibrahim “Abe” Ahmad has always seen himself as an ambassador. Ahmad has taught students from every inhabited continent on the planet. He is a noted writer who has published dozens of articles. His first paper, a co-authored piece analyzing statistics’ use in biometrics, appeared in a 1974 publication by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He later delved into survival analysis, looking at machine failure rates and death rates in organisms. He has taught at McMaster University and the universities of Memphis, Maryland, South Florida and Central Florida. His first department head position was over the statistics division of Northern Illinois University in 1987. He also worked for the Florida Auditor General. His visiting positions include posts at Damascus University, the London School of Economics, Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and King Saud University, and Eglin Air Force Base in Valparaiso, Fla. His big break, he says, came in 2005 at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., where he had an endowed chair and professorship in the math department. It was a prestigious appointment at one of the nation’s top math schools. He came to OSU in 2008 because the program presented a challenge that appealed to him, he says. It was also a chance to return to a statistics department and live in Stillwater, with a lower cost of living for his retirement. He also knew many of the department’s faculty members. “Coming to OSU made me feel like I always belonged here,” Ahmad says. “I believe the department has the potential to become one of the premier statistics departments in the nation.” He is repairing the department’s budget after the 2008 recession and branching out into risk analysis. He is working on adding a certificate program in bioinformatics, the practice of using statistics to solve problems in molecular biology. He also wants to expand the department’s ties to budding research programs in Saudi Arabia and add faculty members. That should bring in more students and grow the department, he says. “Good students give you the reputation you need once you’re in the marketplace,” he says. Ahmad edited the Journal of Nonparametric Statistics for 15 years. He has also been consulting editor for the Journal of Reliability and Applications. He is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Statistical Institute and the Royal Statistical Society. Matt Elliott WORDS Gary Lawson PORTRAIT
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