Hal Stern is professor of statistics and Vice Provost for Academic Planning at the University of California, Irvine. Stern came to UC Irvine in 2002 as the founding chair of the Department of Statistics. The Department now has 9 faculty and more than 40 graduate students in its MS/PhD programs. In 2010 he was named Ted and Janice Smith Family Foundation Dean of the Bren School. Prior to coming to UC Irvine he had faculty appointments at Iowa State and Harvard.
Within statistics he is known for his research work in Bayesian statistical methodology and model assessment techniques. He is a co-author of the highly-regarded graduate level statistics text Bayesian Data Analysis. Current areas of interest include applications of statistical methods in psychiatry and human behavior, atmospheric sciences, and forensic science. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute for Mathematical Statistics and has served on several expert committees for the National Academies. Stern received his B.S. degree in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Statistics from Stanford University in 1985 and 1987, respectively.