Many Honored at Presidential Address and Awards Ceremony
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A special feature of the Joint Statistical Meetings is the ASA President’s Address and Founders & Fellows Recognition, during which the Founders Award winners are announced and new ASA Fellows are inducted.
ASA President Barry Nussbaum presented the Founders Award to Wendy Martinez, Jane Pendergast, Nick Horton, and John Eltinge. “They have dedicated their careers to the field of statistics and demonstrated impressively high standards that have helped strengthen the experiences of colleagues throughout the association’s membership and beyond,” said Nussbaum. “From teaching future generations of critical thinkers the theories and applications that can lead to new scientific discoveries, to calculating and analyzing government data in robust, meaningful, and accurate ways, to advancing research that will lead to more effective health care, they each have left a tremendous footprint in the scientific discipline that is statistics.”
The Founders Award is bestowed upon ASA members with long-standing and distinguished service to the association and its membership. To be eligible for the award, candidates must have served the organization and its membership over an extended period and in a variety of volunteer leadership roles, including involvement with chapters, sections, and committees; officer positions; and editorial activities.
Wendy Martinez
For outstanding leadership and support of statistical and multidisciplinary research that achieved technological development in the areas of defense and national security; for a sustained commitment to the ASA and the profession through service in multiple sections, local chapters, and committees, especially in the areas of computational statistics, government statistics, social statistics, and defense and national security; for editorial work, including as a coordinating editor of Statistics Surveys; and for support of statistical education opportunities for minorities and women.
Jane Pendergast
For service to the ASA over nearly three decades; for skilled and thoughtful leadership of the ASA during two terms on the board of directors, representing in turns the Council of Chapters and the Council of Sections; for service as chair of the Statistical Consulting Section and as the first chair of the Karl Peace Award Committee; and for supporting the ASA and other societies as chair of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies and as secretary/treasurer of Section U of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Nick Horton
For long-term active involvement in ASA chapters, sections, and committees; for serving on a wide variety of committees, including the 2015 JSM Program Committee, the Education Council, the Waller Education Award Committee, and the Traveling Course Committee; for serving as chair of the Statistics Education Section, chair of the Education Workgroup on Undergraduate Curriculum Guidelines, and chair of the ASA/NCTM Joint Committee; for effective leadership on the Council of Chapters Governing Board and ASA Board of Directors; and for exceptional service and leadership in a wide variety of other professional activities.
John Eltinge
For extensive support of and involvement in the continual improvement of federal statistical programs, as evidenced by leadership at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and active participation on the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology and an abundance of interagency committees; for exemplary contributions as associate editor for multiple journals and to program committees for numerous statistical conferences, including service as program chair of the Joint Statistical Meetings; for commitment to enhancing the relevance of the ASA to the federal statistical agencies; and for insightful mentoring at the local and national levels.
Fellows
Each year, ASA Fellows are nominated by the membership and selected by the ASA Committee on Fellows. The following 62 ASA Fellows were inducted this year:
Victor Perez Abreu
Mariza de Andrade
Saonli Basu
Sam Behseta
Kiros Berhane
James A. Bolognese
Howard D. Bondell
Trent D. Buskirk
Brenda J. Crowe
Rebecca R. DerSimonian
Michelle C. Dunn
Debbie J. Dupuis
William B. Fairley
Rongwei Fu
Cathy Ann Furlong
Byron Jon Gajewski
E. Olusegun George
Tilmann Gneiting
Joe Fred Gonzalez
Sat N. Gupta
Charles B. Hall
Toshimitsu Hamasaki
Kenneth R. Hess
Tim Hesterberg
Mevin B. Hooten
Li Hsu
Xuelin Huang
Xiaoming Huo
Snehalata V. Huzurbazar
Ron S. Jarmin
Jong-Hyeon Jeong
Eileen C. King
Thomas R. Krenzke
Shonda R. Kuiper
Christian Léger
Lexin Li
Guanghan Frank Liu
Wenbin Lu
Ping Ma
Yanyuan Ma
Olga V. Marchenko
Michael P. McDermott
Sandeep Menon
Jason H. Moore
Renee H. Moore
Jennifer D. Parker
Roger D. Peng
Michael A. Posner
Cavan Reilly
Steven E. Rigdon
Anindya Roy
Paola Sebastiani
Rajeshwari Sridhara
Anuj Srivastava
Arnold J. Stromberg
Wei Fred Sun
Katherine J. Thompson
Daniell S. Toth
George C. Tseng
Fugee Tsung
Jun Yan
Ying Yuan
Editor Appreciation Award
The following individuals were recognized for their work in publishing educational and insightful journals from 2015–2017:
Nicholas P. Jewell, University of California, Berkeley, was co-editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association (JASA) Theory and Methods
David Ruppert, Cornell University, served as co-editor of JASA Theory and Methods
Nicole Lazar, University of Georgia, served as editor of The American Statistician
Mark Glickman, Harvard University, was editor of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports
Gertrude Cox Scholarship in Statistics
Jointly sponsored by the ASA Committee on Women in Statistics and the Caucus for Women in Statistics, the Cox scholarship has been presented annually since 1989 to encourage women to enter statistically oriented professions. This year’s Gertrude Cox Scholarship went to Julia Wrobel and Michelle Pistner. Read more about the Cox awardees.
Edward C. Bryant Scholarship
Established by Westat, this scholarship is awarded to outstanding graduate students in survey statistics. The 2017 Edward C. Bryant Scholarship recipient is Hejian Sang of Iowa State University.
Mentoring Award
The ASA Mentoring Award is given each year to a member who has demonstrated extraordinary commitment to providing significant early-career support to statistics students, statisticians or statistical researchers.
The 2017 ASA Mentoring Award honoree is J. Stuart Hunter of Princeton University, who is being recognized for his exceptional combination of personal and professional skills that have had an empowering impact on countless statisticians.
Award of Outstanding Statistical Application
This award celebrates the author(s) of a paper that is an outstanding application of statistics in the physical, biological, or medical sciences. The 2017 Outstanding Statistical Application Award honorees are Abhirup Datta of The Johns Hopkins University, Sudipto Banerjee of the University of California, Los Angeles, Andrew Finley of Michigan State University, Nicholas A. S. Hamm of the University of Twente, and Martin Schaap of TNO, Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research.
Their paper, titled “Non-Separable Dynamic Nearest-Neighbor Gaussian Process Models for Spatio-Temporal Data with an Application to Particulate Matter Analysis,” was published in the Annals of Applied Statistics in 2016.
Causality in Statistics Education Award
Established by Judea Pearl, professor of computer science and statistics at UCLA, this award recognizes the work of an individual or team that enhances the teaching and learning of causal inference in introductory statistics coursework. Funded by Microsoft Research and Google in the amount of $5,000, the 2017 Causality in Statistics Education Award was bestowed upon Ilya Shpitser of The Johns Hopkins University.
Jackie Dietz Best Paper Award (Journal of Statistics Education)
This award is given to the best paper in the Journal of Statistics Education from the previous year. The 2017 Jackie Dietz Best Journal of Statistics Education Paper Award honorees are Jane Watson of the University of Tasmania and Lyn English of the Queensland University of Technology for their paper, “Repeated Random Sampling in Year 5.”
Waller Awards
These honors—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 2017 Waller Distinguished Teaching Career Award honoree is James Cochran of the University of Alabama.
The 2017 Waller Education Award honoree is Anna Bargagliotti of Loyola Marymount University.
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 2017 W.J. Dixon Award for Excellence in Statistical Consulting recipient is Janice Derr, formerly of the US Food and Drug Administration.
Karl E. Peace Award
This year, the Karl E. Peace Award was bestowed upon two distinguished individuals who have made substantial contributions to the statistical profession that have led to direct ways of improving the human condition. The 2017 Karl E. Peace Award for Outstanding Statistical Contributions for the Betterment of Society honorees are Mary Gray of American University for the innovative use of statistics for fighting discrimination through the promotion of equality and human rights and Mitchell Gail of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for seminal statistical research in population health that has benefited society through its application to risk prediction.
Harry V. Roberts Statistical Advocate Award
The Harry V. Roberts Statistical Advocate of the Year Award in honor of Harry V. Roberts, an exemplar of statistical advocacy recognizes the accomplishments and contributions of those who have successfully advocated appropriate and effective uses of statistics and data-analytic approaches in business and the public sector. The 2017 Harry V. Roberts Statistical Advocate of the Year Award honoree is Rayid Ghani of The University of Chicago and founder and director of Data Science for Social Good.
Samuel S. Wilks Memorial Award
The Wilks award honors the distinguished career of Samuel S. Wilks and is bestowed upon an individual who has made statistical contributions to the advancement of scientific or technical knowledge. The 2017 Samuel S. Wilks Memorial Award honoree is Wayne Fuller of Iowa State University.
Statistics in Physical Engineering Sciences Award
The 2017 Statistics in Physical Engineering Sciences Award honorees are Caleb King of Sandia National Laboratories, Yili Hong of Virginia Tech, Stephanie DeHart of Eastman Chemical Company, Patrick DeFeo of DuPont Company, and Rong Pan of Arizona State University. Their joint paper, “Planning Fatigue Tests for Polymer Composites,” was published in the Journal of Quality Technology.
Statistical Partnerships Among Academe, Industry, and Government (SPAIG) Award
The ASA—through the Statistics Partnerships Among Academe, Industry, and Government Committee—established the SPAIG Award in 2002 to recognize outstanding partnerships and promote new ones in these sectors. The SPAIG award celebrates the work of organizations, not individuals. The 2017 SPAIG Award honorees are:
Laboratory for Analytic Sciences and North Carolina State University
National Science Foundation and US Census Bureau
Gottfried E. Noether Awards
The Noether awards were established to recognize distinguished researchers and teachers and to support the field of nonparametric statistics. The 2017 Noether Senior Scholar Award honoree is Hans-Georg Mueller of the University of California, Davis. The 2017 Noether Junior Scholar Award honoree is Eric Laber of North Carolina State University.
The Sirken Award in Interdisciplinary Survey Methods Research
Monroe G. Sirken created an endowment to recognize a distinguished researcher for contributions to interdisciplinary survey research that improve the theory and methods of collecting, verifying, processing, presenting, or analyzing survey data. The 2017 Sirken Award in Interdisciplinary Survey Methods Research honoree is J. Michael Brick of Westat.
Be sure to check the section and chapter announcements for additional award honorees. Also, visit the ASA’s list of awards and scholarships to nominate a member you would like to see honored for their work at next year’s JSM in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.