Peihua Qiu awarded Shewhart Medal for outstanding research contributions to the field of quality control

Peihua Qiu
Dr. Peihua Qiu

By Jill Pease

Peihua Qiu, Ph.D., dean’s professor and founding chair of the department of biostatistics at the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions, has been awarded the 2024 Shewhart Medal by the American Society for Quality, or ASQ.

The Shewhart Medal is given annually to an individual who has demonstrated the most outstanding technical leadership in the field of modern quality control and improvement, especially through the development of theory, principles, techniques and successful applications in the area of quality. It is considered the most prestigious award for individuals working in quality-related theory, methods and practice.

In selecting Qiu for the award, the committee cited his “seminal research in developing new quality control methodologies; for exploring new applications of process control charts; for leadership in promoting quality and statistics in healthcare and biomedical studies; and for outstanding editorial service to ASQ-sponsored journals.”

Qiu has made distinguished contributions to the field of statistics and its applications, particularly in jump regression analysis, image processing, statistical process control and survival analysis. He has published three books and more than 165 research papers in refereed journals in these areas. In the past 25 years, his research team developed a series of new concepts, methods and theory for sequential process monitoring and quality control that was pioneered by Walter A. Shewhart a century ago, and which has found broad applications in environmental monitoring, disease screening, disease surveillance and many more areas.

Last year, Qiu was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the highest honors granted to scientists. He is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association, ASQ, and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, as well as an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He has served as associate editor for a number of top statistical journals, including the Journal of the American Statistical Association and Biometrics, and as the editor of the flagship statistical journal Technometrics.

ASQ, which serves more than 70,000 members worldwide, will present the Shewhart Medal to Qiu during its World Conference on Quality and Improvement May 12-15 in San Diego.