Rate My Professor Daniel Nettleton

Daniel Nettleton is a Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Statistics at Iowa State University, holding the Laurence H. Baker Endowed Chair in Biological Statistics. His academic background includes a B.A. in Mathematics from Wartburg College in 1991, an M.S. in Statistics from the University of Iowa in 1993, and a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Iowa in 1996. He began his faculty career as Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 1996 to 2000. Nettleton joined Iowa State University in 2000 as Assistant Professor of Statistics, advancing to Associate Professor from 2002 to 2007, Professor from 2007 to 2015, and Distinguished Professor since 2015. He has served as Chair of the Department of Statistics since 2019, Director of the Laurence H. Baker Center for Bioinformatics and Biological Statistics from 2016 to 2022, and holds faculty appointments in the Baker Center and the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology program.

Nettleton's research interests encompass order restricted inference, multiple testing, hierarchical modeling, random forest methodology, predictive inference, and analysis of data from molecular biology and sports. His publications appear in prestigious outlets such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bioinformatics, Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, and The American Statistician. Key works include "A hierarchical approach to modeling golf hole scores with Hardy distributions" (Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 2025), "Identifying relevant covariates in RNA-seq analysis by pseudo-variable augmentation" (Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics, 2024), "Using conformal win probability to predict the winners of the canceled 2020 NCAA basketball tournaments" (The American Statistician, 2024), and "Light cues induce protective anticipation of environmental water loss in terrestrial bacteria" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023). Nettleton is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association since 2008 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 2025. Other honors include the Iowa State University Award for Mid-Career Achievement in Research (2012), College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Outstanding Career Achievement in Research Award (2015), and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Award for Outstanding Achievement in Departmental Leadership (2024). He has served as associate editor for The American Statistician (2014–2020), Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics (2003–2015), Journal of the American Statistical Association (2009–2012), and Biometrics (2005–2010), and as President of the Iowa Chapter of the American Statistical Association (2007–2008).