Masoom Ali

Mir Masoom Ali

The Pakistan Journal of Statistics and Operation Research (PJSOR) recently published a special volume in honor of Mir Masoom Ali, an ASA Fellow and George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Statistics Emeritus at Ball State University, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. The papers can be viewed at the PJSOR website.

Jianqing Fan and Ker-Chau Li

Jianqing Fan of Princeton and Ker-Chau Li of Academia Sinica (AS) and the University of California at Los Angeles were elected to Academicians of AS during the July 2012 convocation in Taipei, China. Becoming an AS Academician is a major honor for scholars of Chinese origin.

Nancy Flournoy

Nancy Flournoy, professor in the department of statistics at the University of Missouri’s College of Arts and Sciences, is the recipient of the 11th annual Janet L. Norwood Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in the Statistical Sciences. Spanning four decades, her rich diversification in academic appointments range from directorships at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and National Science Foundation’s Program in Statistics and Probability to chairs with American University and the University of Missouri (MU). Having recently stepped down as MU’s chair of statistics, Flournoy is returning from sabbatical as professor. Her research interests in theoretical and applied statistics include clinical trials, adaptive sequential designs, transplantation biology and infectious disease, specifically cytomegalovirus at a key point prior to the AIDS epidemic. Her initial collaborative efforts on transplantation research with the team of E. D. Thomas led to that team receiving the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1990.

Robert D. Gibbons

Robert D. Gibbons was recently announced the Rema Lapouse Award recipient for 2012. The Rema Lapouse Award is granted annually to an outstanding recipient for excellence in psychiatric epidemiology.

Gibbons is an internationally renowned biostatistician and psychometrician with expertise in broad areas of mental health and environmental research. Since 2010, he has been the director of the Center for Health Statistics and professor of biostatistics in the departments of medicine, health studies, and psychiatry at The University of Chicago. Prior to that, he directed the Center for Health Statistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Major themes in his work include development of linear and nonlinear mixed-effects regression models for the analysis of longitudinal data, analysis of environmental monitoring data and interlaboratory calibration, item response theory and computerized adaptive testing, and statistical methods in pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety.

Gibbons has written more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles in various areas of statistical theory and practice and is an author of Longitudinal Data Analysis. He also wrote two environmental statistics texts: Statistical Methods for Ground Water Monitoring and Statistical Methods for Detection and Quantification of Environmental Contamination.

He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and a member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He has received numerous awards for his research, including two Youden awards for contributions to interlaboratory calibration, the Harvard Award in Psychiatric Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and the American Statistical Association Award for Outstanding Statistical Applications.

James Landwehr and Linda Young

James Landwehr and Linda Young are this year’s recipients of the distinguished service awards from the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS). The awards were presented by NISS director Alan Karr during the 2012 Joint Statistical Meetings.

The NISS distinguished service awards were established by the board of trustees in 2005 to recognize individuals who have given extraordinary service that significantly advances NISS and its mission. As Karr noted, the recipients “didn’t have to do what they did for NISS, but did it because they believe in NISS and what it does for the statistics community.”

Landwehr, who works at Avaya Laboratories, was recognized for his many years of service on the NISS Board of Trustees, which includes chairing the board for three years and serving this past year as chair of the board’s Affiliates Committee.

Young, professor of statistics at the University of Florida, was acknowledged for her service on the board of trustees and leadership role in the NISS-NASS research program, which ran from 2009 to 2011.

For more information about NISS, visit the NISS website.

Thomas A. Louis

The Johns Hopkins University professor Thomas A. Louis will join the U.S. Census Bureau through an interagency personnel agreement as the new associate director for research and methodology and chief scientist effective January 7, 2013.

Former Census Bureau director Robert Groves said, “I am overjoyed that we were able to attract a world-class scientist to lead the research directorate. Dr. Louis will add to the innovation Dr. Roderick Little brought to the position over his successful leadership. He will, no doubt, increase the rate of scientific discoveries, which permits the Census Bureau to do its work more efficiently.”

William Q. Meeker

The National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) recently presented the 2012 Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research to William Q. Meeker of Iowa State University. Susan Ellenberg, chair of the board of trustees, announced the award during the 2012 Joint Statistical Meetings. The annual award, named in honor of the founding director of NISS, was established in 2000 to recognize “sustained, high-quality cross-disciplinary research involving the statistical sciences.”

Meeker received the award for outstanding sustained research that develops, implements, documents, communicates, and teaches statistics for the solution of relevant engineering and cross-disciplinary problems, especially in reliability, accelerated testing, reliability software, degradation data analysis, and statistical methods for nondestructive evaluation.

Katherine R. Smith

The board of directors of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics (COPAFS) recently announced the appointment of Katherine R. Smith as executive director. Smith comes to COPAFS from the American Farmland Trust (AFT), where she was the chief economist and vice president for programs. Prior to her position at AFT, she worked for 20 years in progressively responsible positions at the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including as administrator for her last five years.