Katherine Thompson Elected Vice President

Madhumita (Bonnie) Ghosh-Dastidar, a senior statistician at the nonprofit RAND Corporation and head of the RAND Statistics Group, was elected the 119th president of the American Statistical Association. She will be the first Asian-American female president and second Asian-American president of the ASA and serve a one-year term as president-elect beginning January 1, 2023; her term as president becomes effective January 1, 2024.

The ASA membership also elected Katherine (Jenny) Thompson, senior mathematical statistician of the Associate Directorate for Economic Programs at the US Census Bureau, as ASA vice president. Thompson’s term begins January 1, 2023.

As president, Ghosh-Dastidar’s platform will focus on three leadership principles of community, collaboration, and opportunity. One of her goals is to strengthen collaborations across ASA sections, chapters, and interest groups. She believes ongoing activities and events such as mixers, hackathons, and conferences are important ways to engage and attract new and current members. Ghosh-Dastidar also wants to continue the ASA’s efforts to engage with other societies. “I believe that we need to work together across disciplines and silos to tackle the biggest challenges of our day,” she said.

Raised in Kolkata, India, in a family that encouraged boys and girls to dream, Ghosh-Dastidar’s commitment to service was inspired by her parents’ dedication to helping the disadvantaged in their community. As a first-generation immigrant working in a leading statistics group in the US, she knows opportunity can change people’s lives and career trajectories. “The support I received has made me passionate about paying it forward by creating opportunity for early-career colleagues and students,” she acknowledged. Ghosh-Dastidar is passionate about advocating for statisticians to take on roles beyond that of skilled technicians—as thought leaders on teams and in organizations, on panels and in policymaking, and in how statistics are communicated by the media.

At RAND, Ghosh-Dastidar works on environmental interventions, behavioral interventions for HIV-positive patients, and population health. Current projects include multiple NIH-funded natural experiment evaluations of the effect of neighborhood-level improvements on residents’ diet, sleep, and cardiovascular health, as well as carefully examining the role of depression in treatment outcomes for HIV-positive individuals. Her prior experiences include being lead statistician for large-scale surveys on sexual assault and assessment in the US military and the first Singapore mental health study to assess national prevalence.

Thompson begins her tenure as ASA vice president after many years of dedicated service to the association. She has served as chair of the Government Statistics Section (as well as the Council of Sections representative) and was the program co-chair for ICES-VI. She is currently the statistics co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology.

Thompson is a survey statistician with more than 30 years of professional experience. Her practical and theoretical experience covers all areas of sample survey design, including sample selection, estimation, variance estimation, analysis, statistical data editing, imputation, and quality control. She was elected an ASA Fellow in 2017.

Thompson’s top three priorities for her tenure are to promote the Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice in a variety of accessible forums; encourage the publication of statistical methods and applications in peer-reviewed journals; and expand diversity in the field through educational initiatives, scholarships, and increased opportunities for conference attendance and participation—in person or remotely.

The ASA membership also elected the following board members:

• Jana Asher, Assistant Professor of Statistics, Slippery Rock University, as the Council of Sections Representative to the ASA Board
• Melinda Holt, Professor of Statistics and Associate Dean, Sam Houston State University, as the Council of Chapters Representative to the ASA Board
• Ingrid Van Keilegom, Professor of Operations Research and Business Statistics, KU Leuven, as the International Representative to the ASA Board
• Thomas Love, Professor, Biostatistics and Evaluation Unit, Center for Health Care Research and Policy, Case Western Reserve University, as Chair-Elect of the Council of Sections Governing Board
• Jo Wick, Associate Professor of Biostatistics and Data Science, KU Medical Center, as Chair-Elect of the Council of Chapters Governing Board

ASA Section Officers

Statistical Computing Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Claire Bowen

Program Chair-Elect 2023
David Dahl

Council of Sections Representative 2023–2025
Stephanie Hicks

Statistical Consulting Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Robyn Ball

Publications Officer 2023–2025
Christina Mehta

Executive Committee at Large 2023–2025
Margaret Stedman

Section on Statistics and Data Science

Education Chair-Elect 2023
Kelly McConville

Communications Officer 2023–2025
Sara Stoudt

Council of Sections Representative 2023–2025
Amelia McNamara

Executive Committee at Large 2023–2025
Alana Unfried
Samantha Robinson

Statistics in Defense and National Security Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Abby Nachtsheim

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Sarah Burke

Publications Officer 2023–2024
Snigdhansu Chatterjee

Statistics and the Environment Section

Chair-Elect 2023
William Christensen

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Soutir Bandyopadhyay

Treasurer 2023 (Rotates to Secretary in 2024)
Lyndsay Shand

Statistics in Epidemiology Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Diana Miglioretti

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Fei Ye

Council of Sections Representative 2023–2025
Ran Tao

Statistics in Genomics and Genetics Section

Chair-Elect 2023
George Tseng

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Xiang Zhou

Government Statistics Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Bob Sivinski

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Michael Jadoo

Secretary/Treasurer 2023–2024
Nancy Murray

Publications Officer 2023–2024
Elizabeth Petraglia

Council of Sections Representative 2023–2025
Denise Abreu

Health Policy Statistics Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Layla Parast

Council of Sections Representative 2023–2025
James O’Malley

Statistics in Imaging Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Marina Vannucci

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Kristin Linn

Statistical Learning and Data Science Section

Chair-Elect 2023
George Michailidis

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Sudeepa Bhattacharyya

Council of Sections Representative 2023–2025
Jaime Speiser

Lifetime Data Science Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Tony Jianguo Sun

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Pamela Shaw, Kaiser-Permanente

Statistics in Marketing Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Elea McDonnell

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Jeremy Yang

Secretary/Publications Officer 2023–2024
Alice Li

Council of Sections Representative 2023–2025
Dan McCarthy

Medical Devices and Diagnostics Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Laura Yee

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Joanne Lin

Council of Sections Representative 2023–2025
Xiaofeng Wang

Mental Health Statistics Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Doug Gunzler

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Adam Ciarleglio

Nonparametric Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Aurore Delaigle

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Lingzhou Xue

Treasurer 2023 (Rotates to Secretary in 2024)
Alexander Giessing

Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences

Chair-Elect 2023
Jon Stallrich

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Michael Crotty

Statistical Programmers and Analysts Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Jeanhee Pak

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Luis Mestre

Quality and Productivity Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Maria Weese

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Ryan Lekivetz

Charter Revision

Risk Analysis Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Indranil Ghosh

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Jessica Kim

Social Statistics Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Dylan Small

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Monika Hu

Publications Officer 2023–2024
Claire Kelling

Statistics in Sports Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Guanyu Hu

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Nate Sandholtz

Survey Research Methods Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Don Jang

Program Chair-Elect 2023
Pushpal Mukhopadhyay

Treasurer 2023–2024
Rebecca Andridge

Publications Officer 2023–2024
Hanyu Sun

Education Officer 2023–2024
Julia Soulakova

Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences Section

Chair-Elect 2023
Melinda Higgins