Directory

Timothy O’Brien, PhD

About

Tim O’Brien completed his PhD in Applied and Environmental Statistics in 1993 at North Carolina State University (NCSU) where he also worked at NCSU’s Air Resources Consortium, providing statistical consulting in experimental and research design, ecological modeling, principal components and meta-analysis.  Since 1993, O’Brien has worked as an environmental statistician at Washington State University in Pullman and at the French Agricultural Institute (Institut Rationale de la Recherche Agronomique in Jouy-en-Josas); he focused on experimental design aspects of environmental studies during his 1995 post-doc at the University of Augsburg in Germany.  More recently, at Loyola,  O’Brien teaches various courses in ecological and environmental statistics, mixed modeling, and experimental design and serves as campus-wide statistical consultant.

Research Interests

O’Brien’s doctoral dissertation and current research includes the assessment of interaction (synergy) of similar compounds (such as air pollutants) on outcomes variables (such as crop yield); his PhD studies and subsequent research have been funded by grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA).  He is currently working with entomology researchers at BASF in St. Louis on the detection of synergy of insecticides in controlling cockroaches and other pests – with the added complication of assessing any resulting environmental damage.  He is also conducting similar research with toxicologists at Loyola/SES

Courses Taught

• ENVS 203: Environmental Statistics

Selected Publications

Publications related to the statistical models in environmental synergy studies (including computer programs) can be downloaded from this link: http://webpages.math.luc.edu/~tobrien/research/homepage.html

For a complete list of publications, awards, and affiliations, please request his CV.