UB’s Peter Rogerson elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Peter Rogerson, a University at Buffalo faculty member in geography and biostatistics, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The academy was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution. The organization honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people,” as expressed in the academy’s charter.

Rogerson, PhD, is a SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography in the UB College of Arts and Sciences and has an adjunct position in the Department of Biostatistics in the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions.

His research interests lie in the areas of population geography, demographic change, spatial analysis and spatial statistics.​

Among other topics, Rogerson has studied the mobility of the U.S. population, with some research examining baby boomers and how members of this generation have migrated and clustered within the United States. He has also applied his expertise to the fields of health and medicine, examining the impact of geography and other factors on the incidence of diseases including breast cancer.

More recently, Rogerson has focused on developing new methods for the quick detection of emerging clusters in geographic data (for example, how does one determine as quickly as possible whether there is a new cluster of crime or disease?).

Rogerson is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was a resident fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Rogerson has published over 100 research articles on demography, statistics and geography. He is also the author of “Statistical Methods for Geography” (Sage Publications, 5th edition), “Spatial Statistical Methods for Geography” (Sage Publications, forthcoming), and “Statistical Detection and  Surveillance of Geographic Clusters” (CRC Press, co-authored with Ikuho Yamada, PhD).

Rogerson joined UB’s faculty in 1986 after working briefly in several other academic and professional roles, including as a research analyst for the New York State Office of Parks and Recreation; a biostatistician for the New York State Department of Health; a research associate on a special project on economic-demographic modeling jointly sponsored by the American Statistical Association, U.S. National Science Foundation and U.S. Census Bureau; and an assistant professor in geography and civil engineering at Northwestern University.

He received a BA from the University at Albany, an MA from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in geography from UB.

Rogerson is among 276 artists, scholars, scientists and leaders in the public, nonprofit and private sectors named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020. Current members include more than 250 Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winners, according to the organization.