Ian Dryden is a Professor of Statistics at the University of South Carolina, affiliated with the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Leeds (1989) and has held academic positions at Florida International University, University of Nottingham, University of Chicago, and multiple stints at USC. His research focuses on statistical methodology for highly-structured data, including shape analysis, functional data analysis, and object-oriented data analysis. He has authored over 150 publications and two influential books: Statistical Shape Analysis (2016) and Object-Oriented Data Analysis (2022). Dr. Dryden’s work spans applications in medical imaging, corpus linguistics, environmental science, and Bayesian spatial modeling. Recent projects include using remote sensing for peatland monitoring and Bayesian hierarchical models for urban deprivation analysis in Tanzania. He has secured over $20M in grants as PI/Co-I and is an elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. His research outputs emphasize methodological innovation, with key contributions to shape trajectory analysis, manifold-valued data regression, and Riemannian manifold smoothing splines. Collaborative work includes interdisciplinary projects in genetics, pharmacology, and environmental science, reflecting his broad statistical expertise and impact across disciplines.












