Robert Tibshirani

Career

Robert Tibshirani began as an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics and the Department of Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics at the University of Toronto in 1985, becoming an associate professor in 1989 and a professor in 1994. In 1998 Tibshirani joined Stanford University as a professor of Health Research and Policy and of Statistics.¹

Since 2015 Tibshirani has been a Professor of Biomedical Data Science and of Statistics at Stanford. Tibshirani's main interests are applied statistics, biostatistics and data mining, and current research addresses problems in biology and genomics, medicine and industry.¹

Research and software

Many of Tibshirani's publications concern the lasso. With Bradley Efron, Trevor Hastie and Iain Johnstone, Tibshirani co-authored "Least Angle Regression" (2004), which showed that a simple modification of the LARS algorithm implements the lasso, a version of least squares that constrains the sum of the absolute regression coefficients. CRAN lists Tibshirani among the authors of glmnet, an R package that fits the full lasso or elastic-net regularization path for linear, logistic, multinomial, Poisson and Cox regression models.²³

Recent publications listed on Tibshirani's Stanford profile include uniLasso, a two-stage regression method guided by univariate coefficients, its use for polygenic risk scores in genomics, and "Pretraining and the lasso" (2026) in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B. With Stanford collaborator Balasubramanian Narasimhan, Tibshirani also develops software packages for genomics and proteomics.¹

Books

Tibshirani co-wrote "Generalized Additive Models" with Trevor Hastie, "An Introduction to the Bootstrap" with Bradley Efron, and "The Elements of Statistical Learning" with Hastie and Jerome Friedman. Tibshirani is also a co-author of "An Introduction to Statistical Learning", a less technical treatment whose first R edition appeared in 2013, followed by a second R edition in 2021 and a Python edition in 2023, each with hands-on labs.¹⁴

Work and contributions

• Least Angle Regression Published research

  Co-author, with Bradley Efron, Trevor Hastie and Iain Johnstone, of the 2004 paper showing that a simple modification of the LARS algorithm implements the lasso.²

• glmnet Open-source code

  Listed on CRAN as an author of glmnet (GPL-2), which fits lasso and elastic-net regularized generalized linear models.³

• The Elements of Statistical Learning Published research

  Co-author of the book with Trevor Hastie and Jerome Friedman, according to Tibshirani's Stanford profile.¹

Timeline

1. 1985Became an assistant professor of statistics and of preventive medicine and biostatistics at the University of Toronto.¹
2. 1994Became a professor at the University of Toronto and received a Guggenheim Fellowship.¹
3. 1998Joined Stanford University as a professor of Health Research and Policy and of Statistics.¹
4. Jun 23, 2004Co-authored "Least Angle Regression" with Efron, Hastie and Johnstone.²
5. 2012Elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.¹
6. 2013Co-published the first edition of "An Introduction to Statistical Learning", with applications in R.⁴
7. 2015Became Professor of Biomedical Data Science and of Statistics at Stanford.¹
8. 2023Co-published the Python edition of "An Introduction to Statistical Learning".⁴
9. 2026Co-authored "Pretraining and the lasso" in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B.¹

Honors and recognition

• Member, National Academy of Sciences · National Academy of Sciences, 2012¹
• Gold Medal · Statistical Society of Canada, 2012¹
• Fellow, Royal Society of Canada · Royal Society of Canada, 2001¹
• CRM-SSC Prize in Statistics · Statistical Society of Canada, 2000¹
• E.W. Steacie Memorial Fellowship · Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, 1997¹
• COPSS Presidents' Award · Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies, 1996¹
• Guggenheim Fellowship · John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1994¹
• Fellow, Institute of Mathematical Statistics · Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 1993¹
• Fellow, American Statistical Association · American Statistical Association, 1992¹
• Doctor Honoris Causa · University of Waterloo, 2018¹

Where they work

• Stanford University 40 people in the wiki

Related people

• Daphne KollerAlso at Stanford University
• Trevor HastieAlso at Stanford University
• Jascha Sohl-DicksteinAlso at Stanford University
• Percy LiangAlso at Stanford University
• John DuchiAlso at Stanford University
• Josh StarmerTeaching and writing · Machine-learning theory
• James McCaffreyTeaching and writing · Machine-learning theory
• Christopher BishopTeaching and writing · Machine-learning theory
• Alex SmolaTeaching and writing · Machine-learning theory
• Steven LevyTeaching and writing