Robert Santos selected as vice president

 

Jessica M. Utts, professor of statistics and chair of the department of statistics at the University of California, Irvine, has been elected as the 111th president of the American Statistical Association. She will become president January 1, 2016.

Additionally, ASA members elected Robert L. Santos, chief methodologist at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, as an ASA vice president. He will begin his three-year term January 1, 2015.

“I’m excited about the opportunity to serve as president of the ASA—a thriving organization with a membership and a staff devoted to promoting statistical science,” said Utts. “With the increasing demand for statisticians, one of my primary goals will be to educate high-school and college students about the diverse and exciting career opportunities in statistics. Another goal will be to continue my career’s work to promote the importance of statistical literacy to the public.”

Utts is a highly active member of the ASA. She has served as the Council of Sections representative on the association’s board of directors; chair of several ASA groups and committees, including the 2010 Education Work Group, Section on Statistical Education, Committee on Outstanding Statistical Application, and Waller Award Committee; secretary-treasurer of the Section on Bayesian Statistical Science; and member of the Strategic Plan Task Force, GAISE Report Writing Group, Founders Award Committee, ASA Nominating Committee, and Joint Statistical Meetings Program Committee. She also served as associate editor of The American Statistician, the Theory & Methods section of the Journal of the American Statistical Association (JASA), and the Reviews section of JASA.

For her service to the ASA and the profession, she was honored with the association’s Founders Award in 2009 and selected as an ASA Fellow in 1990. In addition, Utts is active in the American Association for the Advancement of Science Section U (Statistics), Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the Association for Psychological Science. She was named a fellow of each organization.

Before joining the Urban Institute, Santos held successive executive-level positions at the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. He also was a partner at NuStats, LLC, a full-service survey research consultancy based in Austin, Texas. Santos earned his master’s degree in statistics from the University of Michigan.

Santos has been an active ASA member since 1976. He also has served on Transportation Research Board, Institute of Medicine, and Committee on National Statistics panels for the National Academies. He is the president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and has served on the editorial board of Public Opinion Quarterly and held a variety of elected positions in the ASA and Washington Statistical Society.

Santos is an ASA Fellow and the 2006 honoree of the ASA Founder’s Award.

New officers also were elected for each of the ASA’s 27 sections. Following are the complete ASA election results.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Publications Board Representative
David Van Dyk, Imperial College London
Council of Chapters Governing Board Representative
Wendy Lou, University of Toronto, and Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Council of Sections Governing Board Representative
Anna Nevius, U.S. Food and Drug Administration/CVM

COUNCIL OF CHAPTERS GOVERNING BOARD (COCGB)

Chair-elect
Ananda Jayawardhana, Pittsburg State University
Vice Chair, Region 1, Dist. 1
Mimi Kim, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Vice Chair, Region 1, Dist. 2
Robert Johnson, Vanderbilt University

COUNCIL OF SECTIONS GOVERNING BOARD (COSGB)

Chair-elect
Madhumita (Bonnie) Ghosh Dastidar, The RAND Corporation
Vice Chair
Natalie Hall, Eli Lilly and Company

SECTION ON BAYESIAN STATISTICAL SCIENCES (SBSS)

Chair-elect
Peter Mueller, MD Anderson Cancer Center
Program Chair-elect
David Dahl, Brigham Young University
Secretary/Treasurer
Abel Rodriguez, University of California, Santa Cruz

BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC STATISTICS SECTION (B&E)

Chair-elect
Ana Aizcorbe, Virginia Tech
Program Chair-elect
Robert Cage, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Secretary/Treasurer
David Matteson, Cornell University

BIOMETRICS SECTION (BIOM)

Chair-elect
Debashis Ghosh, Pennsylvania State University
Secretary/Treasurer
Jonathan Schildcrout, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Council of Sections Representative
Elizabeth Brown, University of Washington

BIOPHARMACEUTICAL SECTION (BIOP)

Chair-elect
B. Christine Clark, Baxter Medical Products
Secretary
Xiaohui (Ed) Luo, Bausch & Lomb, Inc.
Program Chair-elect
Olga Marchenko, Quintiles
Council of Sections Representative
Bill Pikounis, Johnson & Johnson

SECTION ON STATISTICAL CONSULTING (CNSL)

Chair-elect
Christopher Holloman, The Ohio State University
Publications Officer
Vaneeta Grover, DuPont
Council of Sections Representative
MaryJo Smith, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Executive Committee at Large
Edward Jones, Texas A&M University

SECTION ON STATISTICAL COMPUTING (COMP)

Chair-elect
David Poole, AT&T Labs – Research
Program Chair-elect
Wendy Martinez, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Council of Sections Representative
Jonathan Lane, Sandia National Laboratories

SECTION ON STATISTICS IN DEFENSE AND NATIONAL SECURITY (SDNS)

Chair-elect
Barry Bodt, ARL
Program Chair-elect
Katherine Ensor, Rice University

SECTION ON STATISTICAL EDUCATION (EDUC)

Chair-elect
Nicholas Horton, Amherst College
Council of Sections Representative
Jackie Miller, University of Michigan
Executive Committee at Large
Tena Katsaounis, The Ohio State University
Michael Posner, Villanova University

SECTION ON STATISTICS AND THE ENVIRONMENT (ENVR)

Chair-elect
Megan Higgs, Montana State University
Program Chair-elect
Brian Reich, North Carolina State University
Treasurer
Emily Kang, University of Cincinnati
Council of Sections Representative
Jarrett Barber, Arizona State University

SECTION ON STATISTICS IN EPIDEMIOLOGY (EPI)

Chair-elect
Miguel Hernan, Harvard School of Public Health
Program Chair-elect
Daniel Gillen, University of California, Irvine
Council of Sections Representative
Michael Baiocchi, Stanford University

SECTION ON GOVERNMENT STATISTICS (GOVT)

Chair-elect
Michael Davern, NORC at the University of Chicago
Program Chair-elect
Morgan Earp, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Secretary/Treasurer
Jennifer Parker, National Center for Health Statistics
Publications Officer
Sylvia Dohrmann, Westat

HEALTH POLICY STATISTICS SECTION (HPSS)

Chair-elect
Susan Paddock, The RAND Corporation

SECTION ON STATISTICS IN MARKETING (MKTG)

Chair-elect
Kinshuk Jerath, Columbia University
Program Chair-elect
William Rand, University of Maryland
Publications Officer
Andrew Stephen, University of Pittsburgh

SECTION ON NONPARAMETRIC STATISTICS (NPAR)

Chair-elect
Naisyin Wang, University of Michigan
Program Chair-elect
Chad Schafer, Carnegie Mellon University
Treasurer
Ethan Anderes, University of California, Davis
Publications Officer
Nicoleta Serban, Georgia Institute of Technology

SECTION ON PHYSICAL & ENGINEERING SCIENCES (SPES)

Chair-elect
Jennifer Van Mullekom, Dupont
Program Chair-elect
Ananda Sen, University of Michigan

SECTION FOR STATISTICAL PROGRAMMERS AND ANALYSTS (SSPA)

Chair-elect
Pandurang Kulkarni, Eli Lilly and Company
Program Chair-elect
Taylor Arnold, Travelers Insurance

SECTION ON QUALITY & PRODUCTIVITY (Q&P)

Chair-elect
William Brenneman, Procter & Gamble
Program Chair-elect
John Szarka III, W.L. Gore & Associates, Inc.

SECTION ON RISK ANALYSIS (RISK)

Chair-elect
TBD
Program Chair-elect
Michael Pennell, The Ohio State University

SECTION ON STATISTICS IN SPORTS (SIS)

Chair-elect
John (Jay) Emerson, Yale University
Program Chair-elect
Kendra Schmid, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Council of Sections Representative
Tim Swartz, Simon Fraser University

SECTION ON STATISTICAL LEARNING AND DATA MINING (SLDM)

Chair-elect
Richard De Veaux, Williams College
Program Chair-elect
Howard Bondell, North Carolina State University

SOCIAL STATISTICS SECTION (SOC)

Chair-elect
Guillermina Jasso, New York University
Program Chair-elect
Craig Hill, RTI International
Publications Officer
Matt Jans, University of California, Los Angeles

SECTION ON SURVEY RESEARCH METHODS (SRMS)

Chair-elect
Michael Larsen, The George Washington University
Program Chair-elect
Yan Li, University of Maryland
Treasurer
Michael P. Cohen, American Institutes for Research
Publications Officer
Trent Buskirk, Marketing Systems Group and Saint Louis University
Council of Sections Representative
Howard Hogan, U.S. Census Bureau
Education Officer
Stas Kolenikov, Abt SRBI

TEACHING STATISTICS IN HEALTH SCIENCES SECTION (TSHS)

Chair-elect
Felicity Enders, Mayo Clinic Foundation

SECTION ON STATISTICS IN IMAGING (SI)

Chair-elect
John Kornak, University of California, San Francisco
Program Chair-elect
Jian Kang, Emory University
Council of Sections Representative
Todd Ogden, Columbia University

SECTION ON MENTAL HEALTH STATISTICS (MHS)

Chair-elect
Juned Siddique, Northwestern University
Program Chair-elect
Zhehui Luo, Michigan State University