Michael Schemper

Michael Schemper is a biostatistician and an academic, serving as professor emeritus at the Medical University of Vienna.

Schemper's research focuses on nonparametric estimation and testing methods, survival analysis, and particularly Cox regression models, logistic regression models, and explained variation in statistical models. He has been awarded Lifetime Honorary Memberships by both the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics (ISCB) and the Austro-Swiss Region (ROeS) of the International Biometric Society (IBS). According to Google Scholar, his work has been cited more than 21,000 times.

Education Schemper studied statistics at the Vienna University from 1972 to 1977, earning an M.Sc. degree in 1976 and a Ph.D. in 1977. He later completed his Habilitation in Medical Statistics and Documentation at Vienna University in 1985.

Career Schemper's academic career started as a biostatistician in 1977 and as an associate professor from 1985 at the (former) Medical Faculty of Vienna University. He was a visiting associate professor at the University of Texas in Houston, where he remained from 1987 to 1988. In 1991, he became a professor of clinical biostatistics at the Medical University of Vienna, In 1991, he founded the Institute of Clinical Biometrics at the Medical University of Vienna and remained its head until 2015.

Research Schemper has authored more than 300 publications, which have collectively received over 21,000 citations. His work spans both the application of statistics in medical research and the development of biostatistical methods. His research has focused on quantifying the variation in outcomes explained by prognostic factors, contributing conceptually to understanding the degrees of necessity and sufficiency of such factors in outcome modeling. His methodological work has addressed the analysis of survival data under non-proportional hazards and the development of solutions to the monotone likelihood problem in risk (Cox) regression. He has also examined residuals in survival analysis and the quantification of follow-up in studies of failure time. In addition, his work includes the development of statistical methods for assessing the correlation between bivariate failure times under censoring, as well as contributions to the treatment of missing data in regression analysis and to nonparametric estimation and testing in survival analysis.

Awards and honors 2016 – Honorary lifetime membership, International Society for Clinical Biostatistics 2023 – Honorary lifetime membership, Austro-Swiss Region of the International Biometric Society (ROeS)

Selected articles