Faculty, staff, students, and guests of the Clinical Trials Statistical and Data Management Center (CTSDMC) gathered at the College of Public Health Building on Thursday, Dec. 12, to rededicate the William R. Clarke Conference Room. The room is located at N512 CPHB in the CTSDMC’s newly occupied space on the fifth floor.

The conference room honors Clarke, a former professor of biostatistics, for outstanding leadership and service during a distinguished career that spanned more than 50 years at the University of Iowa. Clarke co-founded the CTSDMC in 1989 and served as the center’s associate director (1989-2000) and director (2000-2010). He died in 2017.

Department of Biostatistics Professor and Head Joe Cavanaugh said the rededication ceremony was an opportunity to celebrate the new home of the CTSDMC, recognize the center’s excellence and productivity over 30 years of continuous funding, and to recall Clarke as a “universally respected and revered” leader.

“He was a consummate academician and biostatistician, and if possible, an even better person,” Cavanaugh said of Clarke. “It is entirely fitting that this room has one of the most breathtaking and panoramic views of a campus where Bill had spent 50 years of his life, first as a graduate student, then as a faculty member, and then as the co-founder and eventual director of the CTSDMC.”