In October of 2019, Laura Freeman traveled to the United States Military Academy at West Point to brief staff and faculty on statistical methods in test and evaluation within the Department of Defense. Freeman is the Assistant dean for research in the National Capital Region at the College of Science, associate director of the Intelligent Systems Lab at the Hume Center, and research associate professor in the department of statistics at Virginia Tech.

In her talk, Freeman described how statistical methods have helped solve the complex challenge of deciding how much testing is enough in defense acquisition programs. She also highlighted how the emergence of vast amounts of software, cybersecurity threats, new modeling capabilities, and machine learning algorithms challenge the existing processes and demand another look at using statistical engineering to test defense systems.

This visit was facilitated by the Statistics in Defense and National Security (SDNS) Speaker Program, which aims to foster communication between statisticians and familiarize students with the role of statistics in defense and national security. If you are interested in having an SDNS speaker visit your university, contact the SDNS Speaker Committee chair, Joseph Warfield. If selected, SDNS will reimburse up to $500 for expenses related to the speaker visit.