ISBIS - Deep Thinking In Reliability And Risk Analysis: A Tribute To Nozer D. Singpurwalla

Fabio Spizzichino has been a Professor of Probability Theory at the University “La Sapienza” Rome, Italy, until 2018. His research interests include Probability Theory and its applications, Bayesian Statistics, Markov processes and point processes, Copulas, Dependence and Stochastic Orders, Non-negative Random Variables, Order Statistics, and Multivariate Models for Ordered Statistical Data. He has also worked on the Reliability of Complex Systems, Survival Analysis, Semi-Copulas, Notions of Ageing, Algebraic Approach to Systems' Reliability, Multi-Attribute Utility Functions, Insurance, and Risk Theory. His expertise extends to Monotone (Non-Additive) Set Functions and Fuzzy Integrals, Stochastic Filtering and Optimal Stopping, Occupancy and Urn Models, Paradoxes in Probability and Statistics, and Non-Transitive Preferences and Voting Theory. 

He is author of numerous articles (over 100) on these topics, published in peer-reviewed journals. In 2001, he published the book Subjective Probability Models for Lifetimes (Chapman and Hall/CRC, Boca Raton, FL). Additionally, he has contributed to edited books, conference proceedings, discussion papers and other writings of an expository or historical nature. With an active presence in the academic community, he has participated in numerous international conferences, workshops, and schools. He has also delivered invited talks and seminars at various national and international Universities and Research Centers.

Furthermore, he has contributed to the scholarly review process by serving as a referee for many prestigious academic journals. At present, he is working in particular on applications of survival models to voting theory and social choices.

Refik Soyer is a professor of decision sciences and of statistics at the George Washington University (GWU). He also serves as the director of the Institute for Integrating Statistics in Decision Sciences at GWU. He was the Mitch Blaser Distinguished Scholar in Business Analytics (2013-2018) and served as the Chair of the Department of Decision Sciences (2011-2015)

He received his DSc (1985) in operations research from GW, MSc (1979) in operational research from the University of Sussex, England and BA (1978) in economics from Bogazici University, Turkey. His area of interests are Bayesian statistics and decision analysis, stochastic modeling, statistical aspects of reliability analysis, and time series analysis.

Dr. Soyer has published over 150 articles and directed 18 doctoral dissertations. His work has appeared in Statistics and OR/MS journals such as Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, Biometrics, Statistical Science, Technometrics, International Statistical Review, Management Science, Production and Operations Management, European Journal of Operational Research and Naval Research Logistics. His research was supported by National Science Foundation and Army Research Office.   

He is a co-author of the book titled Dynamic Time Series Models using R-INLA and has also co-edited a volume titled Mathematical Reliability: An Expository Perspective. Refik Soyer is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, Fellow of the Turkish Statistical Association, a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and Fellow of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. He was vice president of the International Association for Statistical Computing and was the founding chair of the Industrial Statistics Section of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. He served on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Statistical Association and was a guest editor of Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, Decision Analysis, and Reliability Engineering and System Safety. He is currently an associate editor of the Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry and serves on the editorial board of the Entropy.