Bani K. Mallick
Bani K. Mallick was recently promoted to distinguished professor in the department of statistics at Texas A&M University. Mallick is a pioneer researcher in the field of Bayesian nonparametric regression and classification and the author of Bayesian Methods of Nonlinear Classification and Regression. His many strengths include his ability to do major collaborative research with scientists from fields other than his own, such as petroleum engineering, bioinformatics, traffic mapping superfund hazardous waste sites, and industrial engineering. He often develops novel methodology and theory that is essential for sound scientific research in these collaborations and currently has seven funded research grants.
Mallick has been an invited speaker at more than 50 conferences and has advised 24 PhD students. He has been selected for many honors and awards, including Fellow of the American Statistical Association, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and Royal Statistical Society. He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and he won the Outstanding Young Researcher Award from the Indian Statistical Association in 2007.
Thomas L. Mesenbourg Jr.
Thomas L. Mesenbourg Jr., the deputy director of the U.S. Census Bureau, has been selected to receive the 2011 Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics. This award recognizes unusually original and important contributions in the development of economic statistics or in the use of statistics interpreting the economy. The award recognizes Mesenbourg for his contributions to developing and advancing economic statistics programs that meet the needs of a rapidly changing economy. He is the 38th recipient of the award and will be honored at events hosted by the three sponsors of the award: Washington Statistical Society, National Association for Business Economics, and Business and Economics Section of the American Statistical Association.
Prior to his appointment as deputy director of the U.S. Census Bureau in 2008, Mesenbourg served as associate director for economic programs (2005 to 2008) and in other executive positions in the Census Bureau’s Economic Directorate. Most recently, he played a critical role in the successful completion of the 2010 Decennial Census. In 2004, Mesenbourg was the recipient of a Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Senior Executives, the government’s highest award for career executives.
Mesenbourg’s major contributions to economic statistics have been meeting the needs of a rapidly changing economy and include expanding coverage of services, introducing innovative classification systems of economic activity, and providing new data on the impact of technology. He developed and implemented these programs by working with other federal statistical agencies, in particular the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), thus improving the consistency, coverage, and accuracy of the data compiled by the Census Bureau and these agencies.
Expanding coverage of services
As the services sector was playing an increasingly important role in the economy, Mesenbourg successfully led efforts to expand coverage and improve timeliness of data on the sector. He directed the implementation of a major expansion of the coverage of service industries in the 1987 Economic Census and further expansions in subsequent censuses, including a major expansion of the collection of product detail. To improve timeliness of the data on services, he carried the expansion of service industries from economic census years into the Services Annual Survey, completing this effort in 2008. He established the Quarterly Services Survey in 2004 and, in 2005, expanded coverage of the Annual Wholesale Trade Survey to include manufacturers’ sales branches and offices. Mesenbourg’s work on the new quarterly survey, which provided estimates of service industry output for almost 20% of the economy, and the additional data on wholesale trade provided critical source data for the estimates of GDP prepared by BEA.
Introducing innovative classification systems of the industrial activities
Mesenbourg played a pivotal role in the interagency development and implementation of the landmark North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). He began his involvement with NAICS by planning and organizing the 1991 International Conference on Classification in Williamsburg, Virginia, which laid the groundwork for NAICS. Then, during the implementation, maintenance, and revision phases of NAICS, he served as the Census Bureau representative on the interagency Economic Classification Policy Committee. His main contribution to NAICS was his strong leadership of the Census Bureau to incorporate the new system into its statistical programs, beginning with the 1997 Economic Census and subsequent annual and monthly surveys. Mesenbourg continued his role in improving classification systems through his efforts to develop a companion product classification system—the North American Product Classification System.
Providing new data on the impact of technology
Mesenbourg also developed and implemented a number of new data collections at the Census Bureau that provided critical information on the impact of changes in technology. He took the lead in putting the federal government into the business of measuring electronic commerce when, in 1999, the Census Bureau began to collect quarterly data of retail e-commerce sales, followed in 2002 by annual estimates of e-commerce activity for manufacturing, wholesalers, selected service industries, and retail trade. These data showed that the levels published previously by private analysts had been grossly overstated.
Mesenbourg also served on an interagency committee to look at the gap in data on business expenditures for information and communication technology equipment and computer software. As a result, in 2004, the Census Bureau began the annual Information and Communications Technology Survey (ICTS) to collect data on noncapitalized and capitalized spending for these expenditures. Data from this survey assist BEA in constructing the investment component of GDP and the Federal Reserve Board and the BLS in studying the implications on technology for growth and productivity. Most recently, Mesenbourg facilitated the efforts of the National Science Foundation to develop a new survey of innovation.
These improvements not only demonstrate his leadership in developing new programs, but also his effectiveness in obtaining the resources to develop new information. Working with other federal statistical agencies, the Department of Commerce, the Office of Management and Budget, and Congress, he showed an exceptional ability to navigate the budget process with great success. In addition to obtaining funding for the improvements described above, he also has supported other Census Bureau programs such as the innovative Local Employment Dynamics (LED) program and its Quarterly Workforce Indicator reports. Through his recent efforts, this program not only has received the necessary funding, but also established the LED as an ongoing bureau program.
Donald B. Rubin
Donald B. Rubin, John L. Loeb Professor of Statistics at Harvard University, was recently awarded an honorary doctorate by the faculty of social sciences and economics at Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Germany, in recognition of his work in the social sciences and economics, particularly his outstanding contributions to the field of applied statistics. The award ceremony took place on May 31.
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