We are proud to present this special issue dedicated to Jack Kalbfleisch, Professor Emeritus of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan. Jack has made many landmark contributions to several areas of statistics, including mixed models, likelihood inference, nonparametric statistics, biased sampling, and multi-state models. He is best known for his work in survival analysis. As an example, at least one edition of the texts co-authored by Jack and close friend Ross Prentice (Kalbfleisch and Prentice; 1980, 2002) is on the bookshelf of practically everyone researching or teaching survival analysis; the text currently has over 15,000 citations (Google Scholar).
What could be considered the first phase of Jack’s career was spent at the University of Waterloo, where he served as Chair of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science for 6 years, then Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics for 8 years. The year 2002 could be viewed as marking the beginning of the second phase of Jack’s career since, that year, the University of Michigan Department of Biostatistics was blessed with his arrival. Jack served as Chair of the Department between 2002 and 2007. He then served as the Director of the Kidney Epidemiology and Cost Center at the University of Michigan from 2008 to 2011.
During the course of his career, Jack has garnered many awards and honors, including elected Fellowships in the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the Royal Society of Canada. Jack is also an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, a Gold Medalist of the Statistical Society of Canada, a winner of the Snedecor Award for Biostatistical Research, and a winner of the Fisher Award (awarded by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies). The long list of Jack’s accomplishments vastly understate his contributions to the field of statistics as a scholar, mentor, and colleague. Jack has had an enormous impact on many of his students and colleagues, as exemplified by the attendance at the several “Retirement Tour” symposia held in his honor!
This special issue consists of 7 invited papers and 2 additional papers selected by the Editor-in-Chief from the accepted regular submissions. The 9 articles cover a broad range of topics of current interest in survival analysis. Prentice and Zhao (2018) consider a multivariate survival analog of the Kaplan-Meier estimator. Lawless (2018) considers two-phase studies with outcome-dependent sampling and cost-prohibitive covariates. Hong et al. (2018) develop methods for survival outcomes with ultra-high dimensional covariates. Wu and Cook (2018) develop techniques of variable selection for censored outcomes arising from biased samples. Sun et al. (2018) develop methods for joint analysis of interval-censored and panel count data. Shinora et al. (2018) consider inference procedures for alternating failure time processes. Choi et al. (2018) develop flexible joint models for survival and longitudinal outcomes. Sildnes and Lindqvist (2018) model semi-competing risks through first passage times. Finally, Wang and Schaubel (2018) develop a class of restricted mean survival time models under dependent censoring.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the authors of the articles appearing in this special issue for their interesting and important contributions. We also wish to thank Mei-Ling Lee, Editor-in-Chief of Lifetime Data Analysis for giving us the honor and privilege to serve as Guest Co-Editors for this issue.
Contributor Information
Douglas E. Schaubel, Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Bin Nan, Department of Statistics, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697.
References
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