Raghu's picture



Trivellore Raghunathan  (Raghu)

Director and Research Professor
Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research
Professor of Biostatistics, School of Public Health
University of Michigan
Research Professor, Joint Program in Survey Methodology, University of Maryland


About Me:

I was born in Nagpur , the central part of India. I had my schooling at Saraswati Vidyalaya. I received my Bachelors and Masters degrees from  Institute of Science,   Nagpur University . My Bachelor's degree was in Mathematics, Physics and Statistics and Masters  in Statistics. I worked as a lecturer of Statistics at the Institute of Science for three years.

I received  a Masters degree in Statistics from  Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.  I received Ph.D. in Statistics from Harvard University.  My Ph. D. supervisor was Don Rubin and the committee members were Arthur Dempster and Nan Laird.

I joined   University of Washington  as an Assistant Professor in 1987. I moved to   University of Michigan as Associate Professor in 1994 with a joint appointments in the School of Public Health and the Institute for Social Research. I served as Director of Survey Methodology Program, at the Institute for Social Research from 1997 to 2001. I became a Professor in 2002 and was Chair, Department of Biostatistics 2010-2014. I became the Director of Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research in 2014.I am also a Research Professor at the Joint Program in Survey Methodology, University of Maryland.

My Research Interests:

My research interests span several areas in statistics including Bayesian Methods, Survey Design and Analysis, Missing Data, Disclosure Limitation, Measurement Error, Spatial Statistics, Longitudinal Data, Small Area Estimation, Combining Information from Multiple Sources and Statistical Methods for Epidemiology. For more information about my publications visit Google Scholar Page.

I have developed a software, IVEWARE, for multiple imputation analysis which is available in both Linux and Windows platforms as a SAS add-on or stand-alone. Download, Use and Send Comments. It is free.

I have published a book, Missing Data Analysis in Practice, which provides practical methods for analyzing missing data along with the heuristic reasoning for understanding the theoretical underpinnings.

My Collaborative Projects:

At University of Washington, I collaborated with Researchers at the Cardiovascular Health Research Unit and Cancer Prevention Research Program, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. At Michigan, I direct Biostatistics Collaborative and Methodology Research Core (BCMRC), a research unit designed to foster collaborative and methodological research with the researchers in other departments in the School of Public Health and other allied schools. I am the Director of Biostatistics and Measurement Core for Michigan CTSA housed at Michigan Institue for Clinical and Health Research. I am an Associate Director of the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health (CRECH). A faculty member at the Center of Social Epidemiology and Population Health (CSEPH) and also affiliated with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI).

My Philosophical Bend:

I follow a Bayesian approach for statistical inference based on statistical models but use frequentist ideas for model checking and model diagnostics. I view that randomization (or near randomization in observational studies) is essential for an objective data collection. For most practical purposes, the likelihood function based on a well-researched and well-formulated model should dominate the prior distribution when drawing inferences. Therefore, the  prior distributions are usually diffuse (justifying the expense of data collection!) but I will not hesitate to use non-diffuse priors, if based on solid empirical evidence.

Other Links:

 cv, unpublished papers, courses taught and other interests.