Katherine Monti to Be Vice President

Jill Talley, Public Relations Manager

 

Karen Kafadar, chair and commonwealth professor in the department of statistics at the University of Virginia (UVA), has been elected the ASA’s 114th. She will serve a one-year term as president-elect beginning January 1, 2018; her term as president becomes effective January 1, 2019.

The ASA membership also elected Katherine Monti, formerly chief statistical scientist at Rho, as ASA vice president. Monti’s term also begins January 1, 2019.

“Complex problems—such as detecting emerging epidemics, ensuring food safety, protecting communications and other infrastructure networks, and establishing overall reliable standards—cannot be solved by single individuals. Statisticians are critical components of teams that address problems in academia, industry, and government, yet, all too often, their involvement arises by serendipity,” said Kafadar. “I’m eager to serve as ASA president in 2019 and look forward to engaging ASA members and the broader statistical community to expand efforts that will forecast areas of change, inspire the next generation of statistical thinkers, and generate diverse opportunities for professionals to grow collectively and in their specialty.”

In her current role, Kafadar’s research interests focus on robust methods; exploratory data analysis; characterization of uncertainty in the physical, chemical, biological, and engineering sciences; and methodology for the analysis of screening trials, which includes awards from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the ASA, and the American Society for Quality.

Prior to her faculty appointment at UVA, Kafadar was a mathematical statistician at the National Institute of Standards and Technology; member of the technical staff at Hewlett Packard’s RF/Microwave R&D Department; fellow in the Division of Cancer Prevention at the National Cancer Institute; professor and Chancellor’s Scholar at the University of Colorado-Denver, and Rudy Professor of Statistics at Indiana University.

Kafadar’s professional accomplishments and activities are vast. She currently serves as the biology and genetics editor for The Annals for Applied Statistics and previously was editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association’s Review Section and Technometrics.

Additionally, she chairs the ASA’s Committee on Statistics in Forensic Science, serves on the Forensic Science Standards Board, and is active on National Academy of Sciences committees. She is a fellow of the ASA, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and International Statistical Institute; has authored more than 100 journal articles and book chapters; and has advised numerous graduate students.

She earned her PhD in statistics at Princeton University and both her master’s degree in statistics and bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Stanford University.

Katherine Monti was highly regarded throughout her career, which spanned academia, industry, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals. For 18 years, she worked at Rho, Inc., a contract research organization providing clinical research throughout the drug development process. Prior to that, she served as associate director at Astra Pharmaceuticals, senior statistician at Ciba Corning Diagnostics, senior statistician at Ralston Purina, and assistant professor in the department of mathematical sciences at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Some of Monti’s major statistical activities have been in the field of clinical trials, applications to veterinary medicine and food science, and design of experiments. Additionally, she has worked on two legal cases, one regarding salary discrimination and another regarding false advertising. In mentoring colleagues, she taught by case-study example, emphasizing both statistics and situation management, which left a lasting impression on coworkers and students who came to appreciate the unique stories she shared.

Monti is an ASA fellow and served as the Council of Chapters Representative to the ASA Board and as a board representative on the Council of Chapters Governing Board. She has held several committee and section appointments, including on the Committee on Fellows, Advisory Committee on Continuing Education, Biopharmaceutical Section, and Committee on Law and Justice Statistics. Her involvement with the ASA Boston Chapter spanned several officer positions, and she was also a member of the North Carolina Chapter.

The ASA membership also elected the following:

Katherine Halvorsen, professor of mathematics and statistics, Smith College, as the Council of Sections Representative to the ASA Board

Don Jang, vice president and director, Center for Excellence in Survey Research, NORC at the University of Chicago, as the Council of Chapters Representative to the ASA Board

Scott Evans, senior research scientist, Center for Biostatistics in AIDS Research, Department of Biostatistics, Harvard University, as the publications representative to the ASA Board

Natalie Rotelli, consultant computational statistician, Eli Lilly and Company, as chair-elect of the Council of Sections Governing Board

Isaac Nuamah, director, clinical biostatistics, Janssen R&D, as chair-elect of the Council of Chapters Governing Board

Following is a list of the entire slate of election results, including officers for each of the ASA’s 27 sections:

Board of Directors

President-elect
Karen Kafadar

Vice President
Katherine Monti

COSGB Representative to the Board
Katherine Halvorsen

COCGB Representative to the Board
Don Jang

Publications Representative to the Board
Scott Evans

Council of Chapters Governing Board
Chair-elect, 2018
Isaac Nuamah

Vice Chair, Region 1, District 1
Lynn Sleeper

Vice Chair, Region 1, District 2
David Fardo

Council of Sections Governing Board
Chair-elect
Natalie Rotelli

Vice Chair
Phil Scinto

Section on Bayesian Statistical Science

Chair-elect
Susan Paddock

Program Chair-elect
Robert Gramacy

Publications Officer
Xinyi Xu

Biometrics Section

Chair-elect
Sheng Luo

Council of Sections Representative
Dipankar Bandyopadhyay

Biopharmaceutical Section

Chair-elect
Richard Zink

Program Chair-elect
Margaret Gamalo-Siebers

Secretary
Janelle Charles

Council of Sections Representative
Brian Millen

Business and Economic Statistics Section

Chair-elect
Peter Zadrozny

Program Chair-elect
Marina Gindelsky

Section on Statistical Computing

Chair-elect
Wendy Martinez

Program Chair-elect
Usha Govindarajulu

Secretary/Treasurer
Jared Murray

Council of Sections Representative
David van Dyk

Section on Statistical Consulting

Chair-elect
LeAnna Stork

Secretary/Treasurer
Mekibib Altaye

Council of Sections Representative
Hrishikesh Chakraborty

Executive Committee at Large
Jason Machan

Section on Statistical Education

Chair-elect
Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel

Council of Sections Representative
Matthew Hayat

Executive Committee at Large
Sharon Lane-Getaz
Cassandra Pattanayak

Section on Statistics and the Environment

Chair-elect
Christopher Wikle

Program Chair-elect
Alexandra Schmidt

Treasurer
Maria Terres

Publications Officer
K. Sham Bhat

Council of Sections Representative
Wendy Meiring

Section on Statistics in Epidemiology

Chair-elect
Kathleen Jablonski

Program Chair-elect
Veronica Berrocal

Publications Officer
Colin Fogarty

Council of Sections Representative
Nandita Mitra

Section on Government Statistics

Chair-elect
Elizabeth Mannshardt

Program Chair-elect
Jeffrey Gonzalez

Section on Statistical Graphics

Chair-elect
Dianne Cook

Program Chair-elect
Ed Mulrow

Publications Officer
Joyce Robbins

Health Policy Statistics Section

Chair-elect
Ruth Etzioni

Section on Statistics in Marketing

Chair-elect
Victoria Gamerman

Program Chair-elect
Tim Trudell

Treasurer
Hiya Banerjee

Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences

Chair-elect
Bryan Smucker

Program Chair-elect
Brad Evans

Secretary/Treasurer
Jennifer Kensler

Section on Quality and Productivity

Chair-elect
Brian Weaver

Program Chair-elect
Shan Ba

Section on Risk Analysis

Chair-elect
Susan Simmons

Program Chair-elect
Aric LaBarr

Secretary/Treasurer
Christopher Sroka

Publications Officer
Maria Barouti

Council of Sections Representative
Edsel Pen

Social Statistics Section

Chair-elect
Trudi Renwick

Program Chair-elect
Stephanie Ewert

Secretary/Treasurer
Stephanie Eckman

Section on Statistics in Sports

Chair-elect
Luke Bornn

Program Chair-elect
Andrew Swift

Council of Sections Representative
Stephanie Kovalchik

Survey Research Methods Section

Chair-elect
Kennon Copeland

Program Chair-elect
Asaph Young Chun

Secretary
Safaa Amer

Council of Sections Representative
Jamie Ridenhour

Section on Teaching Statistics in the Health Sciences

Chair-elect
Amy Nowacki

Section on Nonparametric Statistics

Chair-elect
Dimitris Politis

Program Chair-elect
Bing Li

Treasurer
Limin Peng

Publications Officer
Po-Ling Loh

Section on Statistics in Defense and National Security

Chair-elect
Jane Pinelis

Program Chair-elect
Erin Hodgess

Section for Statistical Programmers and Analysts

Chair-elect
Jonathan Lisic

Program Chair-elect
William Coar

Secretary
Marianne Miller

Treasurer
Amy Gillespie

Publications Officer
Tasneem Zaihra

Section on Statistical Learning and Data Science

Chair-elect
Tian Zheng

Program Chair-elect
Ali Shojaie

Section on Statistics in Imaging

Chair-elect
Hernando Ombao

Program Chair-elect
Tingting Zhang

Council of Sections Representative
Amanda Mejia

Section on Mental Health Statistics

Chair-elect
Booil Jo

Program Chair-elect
Ramzi Nahhas

Section on Medical Devices and Diagnostics

Chair-elect
Zhen Zhang

Program Chair-elect
Martin Ho

Section on Statistics in Genomics and Genetics

Chair-elect
Dan Nettleton

Program Chair-elect
Hongkai Ji

Council of Sections Representative
Pei Weng