For those who were unable to attend or missed some of the activities, here are a few photos and highlights.

A special feature of the Joint Statistical Meetings was the ASA Presidential Address and Founders and Fellows Recognition, during which the Founders Award winners were announced and 62 new ASA Fellows were officially inducted. Congratulations to all.

President David Morganstein presented the Founders Award to James H. Albert, David L. Banks, and Sally C. Morton because, as Morganstein said, “Jim, David, and Sally are proven and effective leaders who have made significant and enduring contributions to the association and profession.” Citations for each 2015 Founders Award honoree follow:

James H. Albert, for outstanding leadership and efforts in statistical education and relationship-building between academia and industry; for service as editor of The American Statistician and the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports and as a member of the Significance editorial board; for major contributions as associate editor of several ASA journals; for chairing and participating in numerous ASA committees and councils devoted to statistics education, Bayesian statistics, and sports statistics; and for heightening interest in statistics through the use of sports examples and applications presented in papers, technical reports, lectures, blogs, and books.

David L. Banks, for outstanding leadership in the discipline, in its interfaces, and in the ASA; for consistent and varied professional contributions in areas of particular public interest, such as human rights, counterterrorism, immigration, and public health; for editorial work and a commitment to modernizing our publications, including as a founding editor of Statistics and Public Policy, as editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and as publications representative on the ASA Board; for service in multiple sections, local chapters, and committees; and for significant contributions on National Academies committees, to federal agencies, and to the National Institute of Statistical Sciences and Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute.

Sally C. Morton, for sustained thoughtful leadership of the ASA as its 2009 president, as a representative to other organizations, and as a member of the Development Committee; for commitment to maintaining the relevance of the ASA to applied statisticians, as evidenced by the development of the Conference on Statistical Practice and the ASA’s accreditation program; for serving on and chairing numerous ASA committees; for editorial service on several journals, including as a founding editor of Statistics and Public Policy; and for advancing statistical methodology through service on National Academies committees and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

Each year, ASA Fellows are nominated by the membership and selected by the ASA Committee on Fellows. This year, the honorees hail from 24 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and six countries. The following 62 ASA Fellows were inducted this year:

• Chul Ahn, UT Southwestern Medical Center
• Girish Arun Aras, Amgen Inc.
• John Aston, University of Cambridge
• Subhash C. Bagui, The University of West Florida
• Raymond P. Bain, Merck Research Laboratories
• Peter M. Bentler, University of California at Los Angeles
• Bruce Binkowitz, Merck & Co. Inc.
• Erin E. Blankenship, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• Ørnulf Borgan, University of Oslo
• Frank Bretz, Novartis
• Eric Chicken, Florida State University
• Kennon R. Copeland, NORC at the University of Chicago
• Jill A. Dever, RTI International
• Vanja Dukic, University of Colorado at Boulder
• Michael D. Escobar, University of Toronto
• Duncan K.H. Fong, The Pennsylvania State University
• Andrzej Galecki, University of Michigan
• Daniel Alva Griffith, The University of Texas at Dallas
• Yongtao Guan, University of Miami
• Susan Halabi, Duke University
• John Joseph Hanfelt, Emory University
• Johanna Hardin, Pomona College
• Ofer Harel, University of Connecticut
• David R. Hunter, The Pennsylvania State University
• Linda A. Jacobsen, PRB
• Timothy D. Johnson, University of Michigan
• Timothy P. Johnson, University of Illinois at Chicago
• Mary J. Kwasny, Northwestern University
• Mary Beth Landrum, Harvard Medical School
• Jodi Lapidus, Oregon Health & Science University
• Yoonkyung Lee, The Ohio State University
• James D. Leeper, The University of Alabama
• Bing Li, The Pennsylvania State University
• Gang Li, Johnson & Johnson
• Peter V. Miller, U.S. Census Bureau
• John P. Morgan, Virginia Tech
• Daniel John Nordman, Iowa State University
• Art B. Owen, Stanford University
• Frank Potter, Mathematica Policy Research
• Fernando Andrés Quintana, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Santiago
• Paul J. Rathouz, University of Wisconsin
• Daniel Bryant Rowe, Marquette University
• Mary Dupuis Sammel, University of Pennsylvania
• Richard J. Samworth, University of Cambridge
• Jaya M. Satagopan, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
• Haipeng Shen, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and University of Hong Kong
• Karan P. Singh, University of Alabama at Birmingham
• Robert D. Small, Sanofi Pasteur
• Victor Solo, University of New South Wales
• Catherine A. Sugar, University of California at Los Angeles
• Fengzhu Sun, University of Southern California
• Jürgen Symanzik, Utah State University
• Peter F. Thall, MD Anderson Cancer Center
• Abdus S. Wahed, University of Pittsburgh
• Ying Wei, Columbia University
• Hadley Wickham, RStudio
• Brian Jonathan Williams, Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Diane K. Willimack, U.S. Census Bureau
• Keying Ye, The University of Texas at San Antonio
• Grace Y. Yi, University of Waterloo
• Hao Helen Zhang, The University of Arizona
• Jun Zhu, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Many more people were honored for their contributions to various causes that advance the field of statistics. Following is a list of some of the awards and recipients:

Samuel S. Wilks Memorial Award

The Wilks Memorial Award honors the memory and distinguished career of Sam Wilks by recognizing outstanding contributions to statisticians who carry on the spirit of his work. The 2015 honoree is James O. Berger, Duke University professor of statistics. Berger has made fundamental contributions to the foundations of statistics and statistical decision theory.

Gottfried E. Noether Awards

The Noether awards were named after the late Gottfried Emanuel Noether, professor at the University of Connecticut, as a tribute to his memory. The Senior Scholar Award recognizes a distinguished researcher or teacher who supports research in nonparametric statistics. The Young Researcher Award is presented to an accomplished young researcher to promote research and teaching in nonparametric statistics.

The 2015 Senior Scholar Award honoree is Willem Rutger van Zwet of Leiden University. He was honored for outstanding contributions to the theory, application, and teaching of nonparametric statistics.

The 2015 Young Researcher Award honoree is Han Liu, assistant professor of operations research and financial engineering at Princeton University. Liu was honored for his outstanding early career contributions to nonparametric statistics.

Outstanding Statistical Application Award

Each year, the ASA recognizes the author(s) of a paper that is an outstanding application of statistics in the physical, biological, or medical sciences. The 2015 honorees are Anne R. Cappola, associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine; Wensheng Guo, University of Pennsylvania professor of biostatistics; Ziyue Liu, assistant professor of biostatistics at the Indiana University Schools of Public Health and Medicine; and Leslie J. Crofford, professor of medicine and of pathology, microbiology, and immunology at Vanderbilt University. They were honored for their paper titled “Modeling Bivariate Longitudinal Hormone Profiles by Hierarchical State Space Models,” published in the Journal of the American Statistical Association (Volume 109, Issue 505).

W.J. Dixon Award for Excellence in Statistical Consulting

Established through a gift from the family of Wilfrid J. Dixon, this award recognizes outstanding contributions to the practice of statistical consulting. The 2015 honoree is Janet Wittes, president and founder of Statistics Collaborative, Inc. (SCI), a Washington, DC-based consultancy. She founded SCI in 1990 after earning a doctorate from Harvard University.

Jackie Dietz Best Journal of Statistics Education Paper Award

This award, established in 2011, is given annually to the best paper in the Journal of Statistics Education in the previous year. It is named after the founding editor of the journal. The 2015 honorees are Jennifer J. Kaplan, University of Georgia assistant professor of statistics; John Gabrosek and Phyllis Curtiss, Grand Valley State University professors of statistics; and Christopher J. Malone, assistant professor of statistics at Winona State University. They were recognized for their paper titled “Investigating Student Understanding of Histograms” (Volume 22, Number 2).

Waller Awards

The Waller Distinguished Teaching Career and Waller Education awards were established with a contribution from retired ASA Executive Director Ray Waller and his wife, Carolyn. The former recognizes an individual for sustained excellence in teaching and statistics education, and the latter honors an individual for innovation in the instruction of elementary statistics.

The Waller Distinguished Teaching Career Award honoree is Robert Stephenson, professor of statistics at Iowa State University.

The Waller Education Award honoree is Rebecca Nugent, professor of statistics at Carnegie Mellon University.

W.J. Youden Award

The W.J. Youden Award in Interlaboratory Testing recognizes the authors of publications/papers who make outstanding contributions to the design and/or analysis of interlaboratory tests or who describe ingenious approaches to the planning and evaluation of data from such tests. The 2015 honorees are Alexander Franks, statistics doctoral student at Harvard University; Gábor Csárdi, postdoctoral research associate in the Harvard University Department of Statistics; D. Allan Drummond, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at The University of Chicago; and Edoardo M. Airoldi, Harvard University associate professor of statistics, for their paper titled “Estimating a Structured Covariance Matrix from Multilab Measurements in High-Throughput Biology,” published in the Journal of the American Statistical Association (Volume 110, Issue 509).

Karl E. Peace Award for Outstanding Statistical Contributions for the Betterment of Society

The Karl E. Peace award is bestowed upon a distinguished individual who has made substantial contributions to the statistical profession that has led to direct ways to improve the human condition. The 2015 honoree is James J. Cochran, professor of applied statistics at the University of Alabama.

Wray Jackson Smith Scholarship

The ASA’s Government Statistics Section and Social Statistics Section present this scholarship annually in memory of Wray Jackson Smith, a founding member of the Government Statistics Section and longtime contributor to federal statistics. It rewards promising young statisticians for their diligence and encourages them to consider a future in government statistics. This year’s scholarship honoree is Jonathan Auerbach, a doctoral student at Columbia University.

The Wray Jackson Smith Scholarship (WJSS), co-sponsored with the Washington Statistical Society, the Caucus for Women in Statistics, Harris-Smith Institutes, Mathematica Policy Research, and Synectics for Management Decisions, Inc., is intended to reward promising young statisticians for their diligence, thereby encouraging them to consider a future in government statistics.

Be sure to check the section and chapter announcements for additional award honorees. Also, visit the ASA’s list of awards and scholarships and nominate a member you would like to see honored for their work at next year’s JSM in Chicago.