The 2019 ASA Educational Ambassadors, Vikash R. Satyal of Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal, and Carlos A. Diaz-Tufinio of Tecnologico De Monterrey, Mexico City in Mexico City, Mexico, attended the Joint Statistical Meetings in Denver, Colorado, to participate in continuing education courses.

The ASA board expanded funding for the program to select two ambassadors in 2019.

The Educational Ambassador Program is an ASA outreach effort launched by the late Martha Aliaga and the Committee on International Relations in Statistics to foster international collaboration and enhance statistics education worldwide. The program subsidizes two ambassadors from developing countries to attend JSM and take CE courses. It also provides a one-year ASA membership.

Candidates are required to have a PhD in statistics and an interest in teaching and be open to study in new areas of research. After attending CE courses in emerging areas of research, the educational ambassadors return to their respective countries and teach the subject matter covered in the CE course(s) within the next year to at least 10 students.

Satyal commented, “To be selected as EA and participate in the JSM 2019 was a turning point of my life. Learning new technologies like data science, categorical data analysis, and R at JSM will certainly enhance my teaching that I will be giving to my students at Tribhuvan University of Nepal. I appreciate all who initiated such excellent knowledge bridging idea and those who are managing the program until now. I additionally wish that EAs be given further refresher training/learning opportunities. As a professor of statistics and chairman of Nepal Statistical Association, I wish a successful continuation of the EA program.”

While at JSM, Satyal and Diaz-Tufinio participated in several continuing education courses, including the following:

• Welcome to the Tidyverse: Reproducible Data Science with R
• Categorical Data Analysis
• An Introduction to the Joint Modeling of Longitudinal and Survival Data, with Applications in R
• Bayesian Thinking: Fundamentals, Computation, and Multilevel Modeling
• Statistical Network Analysis and Applications in Biology
• Analysis of Clinical Trials: Theory and Applications
• Design and Analysis of Experiments That Incorporate Simulator Platforms

Drew Baughman, chair of the Committee on International Relations in Statistics, commented, “The ASA Educational Ambassador program has been a great success in growing the ASA community of statisticians across the world and making links to further statistical capacity building in countries outside of the US.”

Since the program launch in 2005, the Committee on International Relations in Statistics has chosen educational ambassadors from Argentina, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Morocco, Armenia, Costa Rica, Botswana, Colombia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Namibia, Pakistan, Thailand, Nepal, and Mexico. These educational ambassadors have taught the material learned in JSM short courses in numerous academic courses and workshops carried out in their home countries.

“Attending to the JSM was a wonderful experience; the interaction with other colleagues and statisticians around the globe in similar study fields is enriching and stimulating from the scientific perspective. Moreover, the sessions and CE short courses are really high leveled and they contributed with new and fresh ideas for my teaching labor and statistical practice in Mexico,” said Diaz-Tufinio. He continued, “With the experiences acquired in the JSM, my upcoming plans as an ASA Educational Ambassador in Mexico are to diffuse the statistical knowledge not only to my undergrad statistics students, but also I will work to update other professors in related fields. Even more, further plans are to impact outside academia, reaching industry and regulatory sectors as well, with specialized talks and lectures to executives and professionals related to statistics in the field of clinical trials. All this will spread the word of ASA and will help the consolidation of the statistical advancement in my field within my country.”

The committee is seeking nominations for the 2020 Educational Ambassadors from Ukraine, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and/or Central African Republic. More information is available at the ASA website.