A special feature of the Joint Statistical Meetings is the ASA President’s Address and Founders & Fellows Recognition, during which the Founders Award winners and new ASA Fellows are inducted.

The 2018 Founders Award went to Marie Davidian, Alicia Carriquiry, and Dan Kasprzyk.

Daniel Kasprzyk, NORC at the University of Chicago
For an active career supporting innovations in survey methodology, having designed and directed many large-scale surveys in diverse areas, both domestically and internationally; for two decades of enthusiastic participation in ASA activities, including serving as president of the Washington Statistical Society and vice president of the ASA Board of Directors; and for exemplary contributions to many ASA committees, sections, and councils, including outstanding leadership as chair of ASA’s Committee on Statistics and Disability, Council of Chapters Governing Board, and Survey Research Methods Section.

Alicia Carriquiry, Iowa State University
For leadership of the profession at the national level through the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine; National Institutes of Health; and Environmental Protection Agency; for service to many other statistical organizations; for two decades of enthusiastic participation in ASA activities, including serving as president of the Iowa Chapter and vice president of the ASA Board of Directors; and for serving as an officer of the Biometrics Section, as chair of the Section on Bayesian Statistical Science, as chair of the 1999 JSM Program Committee, and as chair of the JSM Task Force.

Marie Davidian, North Carolina State University
For expansion of the ASA’s global reach and strengthening the relationships between statistics and other sciences as ASA president during the International Year of Statistics; for leadership of the profession as chair of the Biometrics Section, Committee on Nominations, Founders Award Committee, and Samuel S. Wilks Memorial Medal Committee; and for thoughtful service as a member of the Awards Council, executive editor of Biometrics, co-editor of Wiley StatsRef, and as a member of the editorial boards of JASA, Statistica Sinica, and Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems.

Each year, ASA Fellows are nominated by the membership and selected by the ASA Committee on Fellows. The following ASA Fellows were inducted this year:

Todd A. Alonzo
University of Southern California

Dipankar Bandyopadhyay
Virginia Commonwealth University

Moulinath Banerjee
University of Michigan

William C. Bridges
Clemson University

Ying Qing Chen
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Yuguo Chen
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Peter Chien
University of Wisconsin-Madison

James M. Curran
University of Auckland

Nairanjana Dasgupta
Washington State University

Michael E. Davern
NORC at the University of Chicago

Aurore Delaigle
University of Melbourne

Michael Friendly
York University

Ying Guo
Emory University

Weili He
AbbVie

Peter David Hoff
Duke University

Chiung-Yu Huang
University of California, San Francisco

Donsig Jang
NORC at the University of Chicago

Bing-Yi Jing
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Michael W. Kattan
Cleveland Clinic

Christina Kendziorski
University of Wisconsin

Ji-Hyun Lee
University of Florida Health Cancer Center

Jae Kyun Lee
Moffitt Cancer Center

Roger J. Lewis
Berry Consultants, LLC

Mingyao Li
University of Pennsylvania

Ilya A. Lipkovich
IQVIA

Lei Liu
Washington University in St. Louis

Mengling Liu
New York University School of Medicine

Brian D. Marx
Louisiana State University

Leslie Ain McClure
Drexel University

Michael Jay Messner
US Environmental Protection Agency

Diana L. Miglioretti
University of California

Brian A. Millen
Eli Lilly and Company

Kristen Olson
University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Taesung Park
Seoul National University

Dionne L. Price
US Food and Drug Administration

James O. Ramsay
McGill University

Kenneth M. Rice
University of Washington

Paul J. Roback
St. Olaf College

Milo Schield
Augsburg University

Carl James Schwarz
Simon Fraser University

Wei Shen
Eli Lilly and Company

Bryan E. Shepherd
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

Richard S. Sigman
Statistical Consultant

Steven J. Skates
Massachusetts General Hospital

Aleksandra B. Slavkovic
The Pennsylvania State University

Peter Xuekun Song
University of Michigan

Maya R. Sternberg
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Zhiqiang Tan
Rutgers University

Boxin Tang
Simon Fraser University

Nathan Tintle
Dordt College

Jung-Ying Tzeng
North Carolina State University

Huixia Judy Wang
The George Washington University

Lan Wang
University of Minnesota

William W. Wang
Merck Research Labs

Yichao Wu
University of Illinois at Chicago

Sharon Xiangwen Xie
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine

Fang Yao
University of Toronto

Yan Yu
University of Cincinnati

Ying Zhang
Indiana University

Zhengjun Zhang
University of Wisconsin

Zhiwei Zhang
University of California, Riverside

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

Editor Appreciation Award

The following individuals were recognized for their work in publishing educational and insightful ASA journals from 2016–2018:

Montserrat Fuentes
Editor, JASA Applications and Case Studies

Steve Buckland
Editor, Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics

Todd Clark
Co-Editor, Journal of Business & Economic Statistics

Rajeev Dehejia
Co-Editor, Journal of Business & Economic Statistics

Dianne Cook
Editor, Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics

Soma Roy
Editor, Journal of Statistics Education

Jun Shao
Editor, Journal of Nonparametric Statistics

David Higdon
Editor, Journal on Uncertainty Quantification

Roderick Little
Editor, Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology

Michael Cohen
Editor, Statistics and Public Policy

Gertrude Cox Scholarship in Statistics

Born in 1900, Gertrude Cox is fondly known as the “First Lady of Statistics” for her pioneering roles in the predominantly male-dominated statistics discipline. Among her many accolades and accomplishments, she became the first woman—and the first person—to earn a master’s degree in statistics from Iowa State University, where she was appointed assistant professor of statistics in 1939. In 1940, she became professor of statistics at North Carolina State University.

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 Trang Quynh Nguyen and Kelsey Erin Grinde.

Nguyen, biostatistics PhD student at The Johns Hopkins University, for academic success in spite of nontraditional training; early research achievements in pursuit of improved statistical methodology related to public health, especially for traditionally underserved populations, as evidenced by several publications; contributions to the statistical community via an array of professional activities; and general positive influence on her community.

Grinde for academic success in pursuit of a PhD in biostatistics at the University of Washington, productive and promising research in statistical genetics and related topics, outstanding volunteer participation and efforts to improve mentoring opportunities in her local community, and leadership in recruiting young students to pursue statistical fields.

Edward C. Bryant Scholarship

Established by Westat to honor its co-founder and chair emeritus, this scholarship is awarded to outstanding graduate students in survey statistics to help support their graduate education. The 2018 Edward C. Bryant Scholarship recipient is Ying Hano of the University of Maryland, College Park, who is recognized for exceptional scholarship and an outstanding record of publications and presentations as a graduate student.

Mentoring Award

The ASA Mentoring Award honors those recognized by their colleagues for their sustained efforts to champion the work and develop the careers of statisticians.

The 2018 ASA Mentoring Award honoree is Michael H. Kutner of Emory University for exceptionally guiding and influencing students and colleagues in both statistics and biomedical research; for dual mentoring to guide statisticians to do better collaborative statistics and biomedical scientists to do better collaborative science with statisticians; for continued guidance and direction provided to students well beyond their graduations and far into their careers; for stressing the role of accurate and honest feedback to his mentees; for fostering not just statistics but statisticians; for enhancing collaborative biostatistics nationwide; and for establishing several awards to recognize the distinguished service to the profession of both current students and graduates.

Award of Outstanding Statistical Application

This award celebrates the authors of a paper that is an outstanding application of statistics in the physical, biological, or medical sciences. The 2018 Outstanding Statistical Application Award honorees are Peijie Hou of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Joshua M. Tebbs of the University of South Carolina, Christopher R. Bilder of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Christopher S. McMahan of Clemson University.

The authors cleverly reformulate the pool decoding process as a time-inhomogeneous, finite-state Markov chain and provide analytical solutions of prediction accuracy and the expected number of tests. Their methodology is having tremendous impact on public health screening, and their paper, “Hierarchical Group Testing for Multiple Infections,” was published in Biometrics in 2017.

Causality in Statistics Education Award

Established in 2013 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. Jonas Peters of the University of Copenhagen and Dominik Janzing and Bernhard Schölkopf of Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany, were awarded the 2018 Causality in Statistics Education prize for their open-access textbook, Elements of Causal Inference: Foundations and Learning Algorithms, that provides accessible coverage of the field, unique original content linking causal inference to machine learning and big data applications, and excellent conceptual and computational exercises for students.

Jackie Dietz Best Paper Award

Established in 2011, this award is given to the best paper published in the Journal of Statistics Education from the previous year. The 2018 Jackie Dietz Best Journal of Statistics Education Paper Award honorees are Julian Stander and Luciana Dalla Valle from the University of Plymouth, UK, for their paper, “On Enthusing Students About Big Data and Social Media Visualization and Analysis Using R, RStudio, and RMarkdown.”

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 2018 Waller Distinguished Teaching Career Award honoree is Deborah Nolan, from the University of California, Berkeley, in recognition of her many years of outstanding teaching and contributions and creative efforts in statistical education.

The 2018 Waller Education Award honoree Lynne Schofield of Swarthmore College, who was recognized for her outstanding contributions to and innovations in the teaching of elementary statistics.

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 2018 W.J. Dixon Award for Excellence in Statistical Consulting recipient is Albert Madansky of The University of Chicago for his myriad contributions to the statistical practice of consulting; for advancing the science of our profession through discoveries made in consulting; for instilling statistical rigor in many areas of application; and for many critical contributions of statistical consulting to advance the common good.

Karl E. Peace Award

The Peace award was established by Christopher K. Peace, son of Karl E. Peace, on behalf of the Peace family to honor the life work of his father. The 2018 Karl E. Peace Award for Outstanding Statistical Contributions for the Betterment of Society honoree is Patrick Ball for his work in bringing justice to human rights violations across the globe and the pioneering use of statistical design and analysis principles in this important work; for the founding and continued leadership of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, an organization that provides data-driven testimony in war crime trials and has published reports on human rights violations, including war crimes, refugee displacement, and police violence.

Harry V. Roberts Statistical Advocate Award

In 2002, the Chicago Chapter established the Harry V. Roberts Statistical Advocate of the Year Award in honor of Harry V. Roberts, an exemplar of statistical advocacy. The award 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. Additionally, the award recognizes the promotion of statistical reasoning by individuals who may or may not be statisticians.

The 2018 Harry V. Roberts Statistical Advocate of the Year Award honoree is David Allison of the University of Indiana. Allison is recognized for his distinguished and longstanding contributions in sound methodology, research integrity, and clear exposition of complex statistical concepts, especially in the globally important fields of nutrition and obesity.

Samuel S. Wilks Memorial Award

The Wilks award honors the memory and distinguished career of Samuel S. Wilks and is bestowed upon a distinguished individual who has made statistical contributions to the advancement of scientific or technical knowledge, ingenious application of existing knowledge, or successful activity in the fostering of cooperative scientific efforts that have been directly involved in matters of national defense or public interest.

The 2018 Wilks award honoree is Peter J. Bickel of the University of California, Berkeley. Bickel is recognized for seminal far-reaching contributions to statistical theory and applications, including robust statistics, semi- and nonparametrics, bootstrap, machine learning, high-dimensional inference, network analysis, and computational biology; and for his exemplary record of mentorship and professional service.

Statistics in Physical Engineering Sciences Award

Established in 1990, this award recognizes outstanding collaborative endeavors between statisticians and scientists throughout the physical and engineering sciences. The 2018 Statistics in Physical Engineering Sciences Award honorees are Youngdeok Hwang of Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea, Xiao Liu of the University of Arkansas, and Kyongmin Yeo of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Together, they’re recognized for their work under the broad theme of physics-based spatio-temporal statistical modeling and prediction, which leverages real-time environmental sensor data and fundamental physical knowledge to address key environmental concerns such as urban air quality and extreme weather events and to mitigate pollution and public health risks.

Gottfried E. Noether Awards

The Noether awards were established to recognize distinguished researchers and teachers and to support the field of nonparametric statistics. The 2018 Noether Senior Scholar Award honoree is Jianqing Fan of Princeton University for outstanding contributions to the theory, applications, and teaching of nonparametric statistics. The 2018 Noether Junior Scholar Award honoree is Anirban Bhattacharya of Texas A&M University for outstanding early-career contributions to nonparametric statistics.

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 2018 Sirken Award in Interdisciplinary Survey Methods Research honoree is Colm O’Muircheartaigh of The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. O’Muircheartaigh is recognized for significant contributions to the theory and practice of survey sampling, especially for complex designs and surveys in developing countries; for innovative research on nonresponse, response error, response variance, and data quality generally, including the use of latent variable models to describe nonresponse, the study of cognitive aspects of responses to survey questions, and analysis of the impact of interviewers; and for important contributions to the education of sampling statisticians and survey researchers around the world.

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 Denver, Colorado.