The ASA is pleased to announce the appointment of Ranjan Maitra of Iowa State University as the new executive editor of Statistics Surveys. He succeeds Susan Holmes of Stanford University and will serve through December of 2013.

Maitra is an associate professor in the department of statistics and statistical laboratory with research interests in the development of methodology for the statistical analysis of massive data sets, clustering, imaging, statistical computing, and machine learning. He has a solid record of publication in top statistics, imaging, and machine learning journals.

Wendy Martinez, Statistics Surveys coordinating editor and chair of the search committee, said Maitra was chosen from among several nominees for his distinguished record as a researcher, his vision for the journal, and his proven editorial record, which includes co-editorship of the Section on Statistical Computing and Graphic’s newsletter and a stint as a Statistics Surveys associate editor.

Maitra sees the journal as having great potential to become an indispensable online tool for statistics graduate students and researchers wishing to know more about a new area of statistics, or even those wanting to keep abreast of recent developments on a specific topic. To that end, he sees Statistics Surveys as a comprehensive open-access resource—a sort of Wikipedia—with the difference that all articles in the journal are written, peer-reviewed, revised, and accepted by internationally acclaimed experts in the field.

The journal already has published articles from experts on topics such as genetics, machine learning, model selection, and wavelets. Also, the time between acceptance and online publication is less than a week—often within a day. Maitra, however, hopes to see additional features introduced to the journal’s website that would make it easier for researchers to find articles.

Statistics Surveys is jointly sponsored by the ASA, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Bernoulli Society, and Statistical Society of Canada. Each section appoints an executive editor.