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Dennis D. Leber (Fed)
Supervisory Mathematical Statistician
Dennis Leber is a Mathematical Statistician at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the Statistical Engineering Division (SED). Dennis serves as the leader of the Statistical Design, Analysis, and Modeling Group within SED.
Prior to joining SED in January 2002, Dennis spent five years performing risk analysis and program development in the Actuarial Research Department at the Prudential Property and Casualty Insurance Company in Holmdel, NJ. Dennis earned his B.S. degree in Mathematics from Bloomsburg University (1997), an M.S. degree in Statistics from Rutgers University (1999), and an M.S. degree (2007) and Ph.D. degree (2016) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland. His current research interests include experiment design to support selection decisions and multiple attribute decision making when faced with uncertain attribute values.
In his collaborative role in NIST's Statistical Engineering Division, Dennis provides leadership and guidance to the scientists and engineers at NIST and other Federal agencies in problem formulation, experiment design, and statistical analysis for physical science research. Throughout his career, Dennis has been a major contributor and key collaborator to many scientific and technical staff. Several notable and long-term collaborations include his work with NIST's Ionizing Radiation Physics Division, and the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in the design of radiation detection experiments and in the modeling and analysis of the resulting data; work with researchers in NIST's Office of Law Enforcement Standards (OLES) to study the performance of ballistic body armor and improve national body armor standards; and more recently, uniting with analytical chemists in NIST’s Materials Measurement Science Division to model the illicit drug landscape in efforts to combat the U.S. opioid crisis.
When he and his wife are not attending school and club sporting events for their two teenaged boys, you’ll find Dennis hiking local trails with his dog, cycling the rolling country roads of Western Howard County, or lost in the backcountry of the Rocky Mountains on his snowboard.
Technical Areas of Research and Consulting:
- Statistical Design and Analysis of Experiments
- Decision Analysis and Uncertainty in Decision Making
Awards:
U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal (2010) for Scientific/Engineering Achievement:
For providing the Nation's police enhanced confidence in their ballistic-resistant body armor by revealing and addressing root causes of field failure
NIST Bronze Medal (2018) for significant contributions affecting major programs and scientific accomplishments:
For exceptional leadership in founding the ASTM Committee F45 on driverless automatic guided industrial vehicles, and for providing the technical basis of the committee’s first four performance standards for automatic/automated/autonomous unmanned ground vehicles (A-UGVs)
Professional Activities and Societies:
- Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), Member
Decision Analysis Society - Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineers (IISE), Member
Society of Health Systems