Rafael A Irizarry

Rafael A Irizarry is Professor and Chair of Data Science at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Professor of Biostatistics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, holding the Lavine Family Chair for Preventative Cancer Therapies. He received his PhD in Statistics from UC Berkeley, specializing in statistical models for music sound signals.

His research focuses on genomics and high-throughput data analysis, developing open-source tools disseminated through Bioconductor. Irizarry has made significant contributions to understanding circadian patterns, fetal health monitoring, hurricane impacts in Puerto Rico, and COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness. He created popular online courses in data science and genomics analysis, with freely available textbooks and code repositories.

Irizarry has received numerous honors including:

• COPSS Presidents' Award (most prestigious statistics award)
• Benjamin Franklin Award in Life Sciences
• Ranked second-most cited mathematical scientist globally

He serves on NIH study sections and advisory committees, including the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research.