Geoff Vining, a professor in statistics with the Virginia Tech College of Science, recently received in November an honorary doctorate from Luleå University of Technology in Sweden.

Vining is an acclaimed statistics researcher, internationally known for his expertise in the use of experimental design for quality, productivity, and reliability improvement and in the application of statistical process control. A two-time Virginia Tech alumnus, he has done extensive consulting work, most recently with NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense.

In 2008, Vining served as a guest professor with Luleå University of Technology’s mathematical statistics division, and he has continued to visit the university to give guest lectures for graduate courses and to assess doctoral theses. He also led a one-day course on regression analysis this past spring.

Among Vining's awards is the 2015 Box Medal from the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics, honoring a statistician contributed to the development and application of statistical methods in European business and industry. He has also written and/or edited multiple publications and textbooks, two of which have been used in Ph.D. courses at Luleå. Vining also has served as editor-in-chief of the journal Quality Engineering, and editor of the Journal of Quality Technology.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Tennessee in 1981, and master’s and doctoral degrees from Virginia Tech’s Department of Statistics in 1986 and 1988, respectively.

Written by Jessie Rogers, of Suffolk, Virginia, a senior in the Department of English, part of the College Liberal Arts and Human Sciences

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