Bovas Abraham

The American Society for Quality (ASQ) awarded the 2014 Shewhart Medal to Bovas Abraham during its World Quality Congress, held in Dallas, Texas, in May. The medal recognizes outstanding leadership in modern quality control. The citation reads, “To Bovas Abraham, in the year 2014, for outstanding contributions to quality improvement through research, teaching, and consulting; for leadership in professional societies and education; and for outreach through conference organization.”

In addition to the Shewhart Medal, Abraham holds a service award from the International Statistical Institute and the William G. Hunter Award from the Statistics Division of ASQ. Read more about Abraham at the Statistics Views website.

Susan Ellenberg and Keith Soper

Susan Ellenberg and Keith Soper received the 2014 Distinguished Service Award from the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS). Alan Karr, director of NISS, presented the awards on August 4 at the NISS/SAMSI (Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute) reception, held during the 2014 Joint Statistical Meetings in Boston, Massachusetts.

The NISS Distinguished Service awards were established by the board of trustees in 2005 to recognize individuals who have given extraordinary service that significantly advances NISS and its mission. Karr said, “These individuals didn’t have to do what they did, but they did it because they believe in NISS and its role in the statistics community.”

Ellenberg, who chaired the NISS Board of Trustees from 2011–2014, was given the award for helping lead NISS through “exciting and challenging times, always with common sense, wisdom, and good humor,” noted Karr. Ellenberg is professor of biostatistics in the department of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She formerly held leadership positions at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health.

Soper, senior director at Merck, was recognized for his long-term service to NISS as a two-term member of the board of trustees. He served on the executive committee and was also chair of the affiliates committee during 2013–2014. Karr said, “You have helped NISS reinvigorate the affiliates program and to move it in new and important directions.”

Ellenberg and Soper’s names will be added to a plaque displayed in the lobby of the NISS building in Research Triangle Park that lists the names of all recipients, of which there are now 25.

Peter Thall

The 2014 Don Owen Award, given by the San Antonio Chapter of the American Statistical Association, was presented to Peter Thall on March 21, 2014, during the Conference of Texas Statisticians by chapter vice president, Jesús Cuéllar Fuentes. The conference was held at the University of Texas (UT) at Dallas and organized by Min Chen and Robert Serfling of the department of mathematical sciences. Thall was nominated by Serfling.

Thall is a professor at the department of biostatistics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He earned his doctoral degree in statistics and probability from Florida State University in 1975, after which he worked for five years in the department of mathematical sciences at UT Dallas and 10 years in the department of statistics at The George Washington University before joining UT MD Anderson Cancer Center in 1991.

Thall has published more than 160 referred research articles in statistical and medical journals. His research includes several topics, including probability, stochastic processes, statistical modeling, clinical trials, and the application of Bayesian methods to the design and analysis of clinical trials. He pioneered the Bayesian approach to the design of clinical trials and is widely recognized for his expertise in the design and analysis of clinical trials.

For more information about the award or Thall, visit the ASA awards web page.

Karl Peace

ASA member Karl Peace recently established the Elsie Mae Cloud Peace Awards for Academic Excellence at Baker County High School in Newton, Georgia. Three students from grades 9–12 who have the highest grades across all subjects will be recognized with a monetary prize on an annual basis.

The awards, which honor Peace’s mother, were established to serve as an impetus for students to strive for high academic achievement. Peace’s mother, who faced hardships and challenges throughout her life, was able to attend school for only three years. She completed the sixth grade in the three years she attended school. She was an avid reader—reading everything she could get her hands on—and a major influence on her son in his educational pursuits. Toward the end of her life, she remarked, “There are few places that I’ve visited physically, but there are fewer places I haven’t visited in my mind.”

To read more about the academic excellence award, visit the Georgia Southern University website.

Judith D. Singer

Judith D. Singer, senior vice provost for faculty development and diversity and James Bryant Conant Professor of Education at Harvard University, is the recipient of the 13th annual Janet L. Norwood Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in the Statistical Sciences. She will accept the award at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For more information about the award and to read more about Singer, visit the University of Alabama at Birmingham website.

Terry Speed

Terry Speed, head of bioinformatics at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, is the recipient of the 2014 Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research. The award is given by the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) to recognize “sustained, high-quality, cross-disciplinary research involving the statistical sciences.” The award was announced at the 2014 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Boston, Massachusetts.

The awards committee of the NISS Board of Trustees selected Speed, citing him as “a pioneer in the development and application of statistical methods for the analysis of biomedical and genomic data. His work exemplifies the best of applied statistics in cross-disciplinary research and is notable for its creativity, rigor, and relevance.”

Speed’s research focuses on the application of statistics to problems in genetics and molecular biology. He has spent years looking at the mapping and expression of genes in mice and humans, including disease genes and genes contributing to other traits.

Speed also was awarded the prestigious Australian Prime Minister’s Prize for Science recently. Read more about the award and Speed on the NISS website.

C. R. Rao

C. R. Rao was awarded a doctor of science (honoris causa) degree at the convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology, Khanpur, on July 26, 2014, with the following citation: “For his contribution to the foundations of modern statistics through the introduction of concepts such as Cramer-Rao inequality, Rao-Blackwellization, Rao Distance, and Rao Measure; and for introducing the idea of orthogonal arrays for the industry to design high-quality products.”

This is Rao’s 38th honorary doctorate degree received from universities in 19 countries spanning six continents.

Victoria Stodden

Victoria Stodden, assistant professor of statistics at Columbia University and a noted expert on reproducibility of scientific research, will present a talk on the topic during an appearance at the Mathematical Association of America’s (MAA) Distinguished Lecture Series on October 23.

The ASA is sponsoring Stodden’s talk in celebration of its 175th anniversary.

Stodden has written extensively about reproducible research, including a book titled Implementing Reproducible Research, and testified before Congress about the topic. She also served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Responsible Science: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process.

During her presentation, Stodden will talk about several key challenges, including the reproducibility and verifiability of statistical results, reliance on Big Data findings in public discourse and decisionmaking, and privacy considerations. She also will outline several solutions based in emerging computational tools, policy, the practice of science, and statistical methods.

For more information and to register, visit the MAA website.

Abdus S. Wahed

Abdus S. Wahed was honored with the Statistician of the Year Award by the ASA Pittsburgh Chapter at the group’s annual banquet April 17. The award was established by the chapter in 1969 to recognize the contribution of its members to the statistical community.

Wahed is an associate biostatistics professor. The award recognizes his accomplishments in theoretical research, applied statistics, teaching, mentorship, professional service, and institutional service. He is an expert in methods for design and analysis of sequentially randomized clinical trials and dynamic treatment regimes. He also is involved in the summer institute of biostatistics program for undergraduate students and is director of the department’s PhD program.

He received the 2010 James L. Craig Award for Teaching Excellence from the graduate school of public health at the University of Pittsburgh.

Additionally, Wahed served as the 2012–2013 president of the ASA’s Pittsburgh Chapter. He is currently a member of the ASA’s Committee on International Relations in Statistics.

John Stufken

John Stufken has joined the school of mathematical and statistical sciences (SoMSS) at Arizona State University as the Charles Wexler Professor in Statistics. His hiring is an initial step in ASU’s goal to build a strong statistics unit over the coming years. Plans are under way to elevate this unit into a statistics department under the umbrella of SoMSS.

Guan Yu

Guan Yu, a PhD candidate at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is this year’s recipient of the Young Statisticians in Business and Industry Award. The award recognizes the best paper, based on both content and delivery, presented by an early career researcher at the International Symposium on Business and Industrial Statistics Conference, which was held in June in Durham, North Carolina. The conference is hosted by the International Statistical Institute.

Yu’s paper is titled “Sparse Regression Incorporating Graphical Structure Among Predictors.” The paper focuses on using the structure information among predictors to improve sparse regression models. This structure information can be modeled by the connectivity of an undirected graph.

Yu was awarded $500 for his paper by the National Institute of Statistical Sciences and the ASA.