George Casella

George C. Casella
Born	(1951-01-22)January 22, 1951 The Bronx, New York City
Died	Gainesville, Florida
Nationality	United States
Fields	Statistics
Institutions	Rutgers University, Cornell University, University of Florida
Alma mater	Purdue University
Thesis	Minimax Ridge Regression Estimation (1977)
Doctoral advisor	Leon Jay Gleser
Doctoral students	Lynn Eberly

George Casella (22 January 1951 – 17 June 2012) was a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Florida. He died from multiple myeloma.

Academic career

Casella completed his undergraduate education at Fordham University and graduate education at Purdue University. He served on the faculty of Rutgers University, Cornell University, and the University of Florida. His contributions focused on the area of statistics including Monte Carlo methods, model selection, and genomic analysis. He was particularly active in Bayesian and empirical Bayes methods, with works connecting with the Stein phenomenon, on assessing and accelerating the convergence of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, as in his Rao-Blackwellisation technique, and in inventing the Bayesian lasso.

Awards

Casella was named as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1988, and he was made an Elected Fellow of the International Statistical Institute in 1989. In 2009, he was made a Foreign Member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences.