Howard Friedman

Howard Friedman
Born Howard Steven Friedman
(1972-06-10) June 10, 1972
New York City
Nationality American
Occupation Scientist
Professor
Artist
Writer
Employer United Nations
Columbia University

Howard Steven Friedman (born June 10, 1972) is a prominent American statistician, health economist, writer and artist currently employed at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and as an adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University[1]

Friedman is widely known for his role as a lead statistical modeler on a number of key United Nations projects and for his wide-ranging publications in the fields of statistics and health economics.

Biography

Career

Friedman was born in New York City and received his bachelor's degree from Binghamton University in applied physics in 1993. He received a master's in statistics in 1998 and PhD in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1999. His thesis work focused on neural representations of object color through neurophysiological records of awake, behaving monkeys. This research leveraged a visual phenomenon known as Troxler's fading which is related to color filling-in to explore how object color is represented in the visual cortex. He has also contributed to areas of changepoint detection as it applies to neurophysiology.

Friedman was awarded a number of awards during his undergraduate and graduate career including the National Merit Scholarship, Whitaker Foundation Fellowship[2] and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship NSF-GRF

Following his dissertation work, Friedman took a position as a director at Capital One where he led teams of statisticians, analysts and programmers in various areas of operations and marketing. He left Capital One to form Analytic Solutions LLC in 2003 which provided consulting services in areas of designing, developing and modeling data.

He moved to a full-time position at the United Nations in 2007 where he has since been a lead on work including the ICPD @ 15 Costing, High Level Task Force on Innovative Financing, and the Adding It Up reports. He is credited with being the lead developer of the Integrated Health Model (used for costing the Health-related Millennium Development Goals within UNDP) and the Reproductive Health Costing Tool in UNFPA[3] He is a lead scientist for the interagency collaboration among UNICEF, World Bank, World Health Organization, UNFPA, UNAIDS and UNDP for the development of the Unified Health Model, a project sponsored by the IHP+.[4] In 2014, he was a Visiting Researcher at Oxford University's Department of Economics.

Friedman is the author of over 50 scientific articles and book chapters in areas of applied statistics, health economics and politics.

Personal

Friedman was born in New York City. His father worked as a math teacher, his mother worked as an early education teacher.

Literature and artwork

In addition to his scientific career, Friedman is an accomplished artist[5][6] and writer. His formal art training was at both Binghamton University and the School of Visual Arts. His first book, Angels and Stardust, featured original poetry and artwork. In his doctoral thesis, he quoted both Ozymandias and Angels and Stardust in the preface. His paintings have been displayed in a number of New York City venues.

His recent writing is focused on political analysis leveraging his statistics and United Nations experience have been published in numerous online venues including the Huffington Post,[7] beforeitsnews.com,[8] opensalon.com[9] and cnbc.com.[10]

In June 2012, Prometheus Books released his book Measure of a Nation. This book focuses on how to improve America by first comparing its performance with thirteen competitive industrial nations, then identifying the best practices found throughout the world that can be adopted here in the United States. Measure of a Nation was named by Jared Diamond as the best book of 2012 in an interview[11] published in the New York Times.

Friedman released an e-book, A Modest Proposal for America, in May 2013 through Foreword Literary that combines an opening satire on America with an analysis of US federal government finances.

Selected publications

Peer-review publications

Book publications

Major United Nations related publications (analyst or co-author)

References

  1. "Howard Friedman". SIPA Columbia University. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  2. "Whitaker Foundation Report". Whitaker Foundation. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  3. "Review of Costing Tools Relevant to the Health MDGs" (PDF). PMNCH. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  4. "IHP+ Report" (PDF). International Health Partnership. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  5. "Selected Artist Jewcy". Jewcy. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  6. "Angels and Stardust". Angels and Stardust. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  7. "Huffington Post". Retrieved 2012-07-06.
  8. "Beforeitsnews". Retrieved 2012-07-06.
  9. "opensalon.com". Retrieved 2012-07-06.
  10. "Bullish on Books Blog at CNBC". Retrieved 2012-07-06.
  11. "Jared Diamond - By the Book, New York Times". The New York Times. 2013-01-17. Retrieved 2013-02-16.
  12. "The coding of uniform color figures in monkey visual cortex". Journal of Physiology. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  13. "Coding of Border Ownership". Journal of Neuroscience. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  14. "Smoothing Bandwidth Selection for Response Latency Estimation". Journal of Neuroscience Methods. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  15. "Donor Support Report 2008 (published 2009)" (PDF). UNFPA. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  16. "The Case for Asia and the Pacific" (PDF). WHO. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  17. "A Guide for Tools For Assessments in Sexual and Reproductive Health 2009". UNFPA. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  18. "Contraceptive Projections and the Donor Gap (Meeting the Challenge" (PDF). Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  19. "Donor Support Report 2007 (published 2008)" (PDF). UNFPA. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
  20. "Contraception: An Investment in Lives, Health and Development" (PDF). UNFPA and Guttmacher Institute. Retrieved 2010-03-27.
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