I am Professor of Biostatistics and I hold the endowed University Chair in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health (EBOH) at McGill University. Between 2002 and 2016 I worked in the Department of Statistical Methods of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where I became Full Professor of Statistics in 2012. This article describes how I decided to be a Statistician.

I am an Elected Fellow of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (2024), the American Statistical Association (2020) and an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute (2010). I was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Medal (2017) from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and the Environment and the Abdel El-Shaarawi Young Investigator Award (2008), from The International Environmetrics Society. I was the President of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis in 2015.

I am an Associate Member of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and of the Quantitative Life Sciences Program (QLS). My main areas of research are on the modelling of complex spatial and spatio-temporal processes under the Bayesian framework.