Scott Vander Wiel of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Janet Myhre of Claremont McKenna College (retired) have been honored with the Section on Statistics in Defense and National Security Distinguished Achievement Award for 2021. The annual award recognizes an outstanding accomplishment or sustained contribution at the intersection of the statistical profession and national defense.

Vander Wiel has developed novel statistical methods to quantify uncertainty in physical models of the US nuclear stockpile, nuclear forensics, fundamental nuclear data, materials performance, reliability, and rare events for defense applications. He has exemplified LANL’s mission to solve national security challenges through scientific excellence with deep collaboration in multidisciplinary teams and developing novel methodology to meet important milestones in diverse national security areas. In addition to his outstanding technical accomplishments across a wide problem space, Vander Wiel has played a large role in mentoring statisticians and scientists at LANL.

Myhre has supported the Navy’s strategic deterrent as the statistical adviser to Navy Strategic Systems Programs leadership for more than 50 years. This required her to independently review reliability and safety analyses provided by the government and contractors such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin and offer modifications to their proposals or new approaches. She founded the Reed Institute for Decision Science at Claremont McKenna, which gave students an opportunity to work on real-life defense-related statistical problems.

Through her efforts, there have been many former students placed in defense-related statistical positions, which has expanded the use of statistics in the community.