Professor Mariana Kotzeva was appointed Director General of Eurostat by the European Commission on 1 March 2018. She is the first woman at the helm of Eurostat.
Ms Kotzeva joined Eurostat as an Adviser Hors Classe to the Director General in 2012. Two years later, in 2014, she was appointed Deputy Director-General.
Prior to joining the European Commission, Ms Kotzeva was the Head of Bulgaria’s National Statistical Institute. She also held a number of high-level consulting posts in the Bulgarian and foreign administrations, and led international projects for the United Nations and the World Bank.
Ms Kotzeva has a Master's degree in economics and a PhD in statistics and econometrics. She also has an Executive Education training at Harvard Kennedy School. Ms Kotzeva is an Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Prof. Partha Lahiri is Professor and Director of the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM) and Professor of Department of Mathematics at the University of Maryland College Park (UMD), and an Adjunct Research Professor of the Institute of Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prior to joining UMD, prof. Lahiri was the Milton Mohr Professor of Statistics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research interests include survey statistics, Bayesian statistics, data integration, and small-area estimation. He published over 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals, delivered 17 plenary/keynote speeches and over 80 invited talks in professional meetings worldwide. Over the years, prof. Lahiri served on the editorial board of several international journals, including the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Statistics in Transition New Series, and Survey Methodology. He served on several advisory committees, including the U.S. Census Advisory committee and U.S. National Academy panel and served as consultant for international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank. Prof. Lahiri is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He received the 2021 SAE Award at the 63rd World Statistics Congress Satellite Meeting on Small Area Estimation in recognition of lifetime contributions to small area estimation research. More recently, Prof. Lahiri was awarded the Neyman Medal at a joint session of the 3rd Congress of Polish Statistics and 2022 International Association of Official Statistics (IAOS) held in Krakow, Poland, for outstanding contributions to the development of statistical sciences.
