People News for January 2023

Mahmoud Torabi

The International Association of Survey Statisticians prize committee awarded the first Hukum Chandra Memorial Prize to professor Mahmoud Torabi of the University of Manitoba for his Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B paper, “SUMCA: Simple, Unified, Monte Carlo–Assisted Approach to Second-Order Unbiased MSPE Estimation.”

Torabi was invited to present a special webinar, titled “Small Area Estimation: A Novel Approach on Estimation of Mean Squared Prediction Error of Small-Area Predictors,” which featured nearly 100 participants. Watch the recorded webinar and view the slides.

The Hukum Chandra memorial prize is awarded to a person who has made an important contribution to research areas of Hukum Chandra’s work, namely survey sampling, small area estimation, official statistics, spatial analysis applied to official and survey statistics, and agricultural statistics. The award is offered every other year and is open to applicants from all regions of the world.

G. David Williamson

G. David Williamson—an accomplished leader and adviser who has made exceptional statistical contributions throughout his 35 years of service at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry—is the recipient of the 2022 Michael H. Kutner Award for Distinguished Service to the Discipline.

Currently, Williamson serves as a primary scientific adviser and associate director for science at the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, providing direction for and leadership in developing and implementing the scientific research agenda and facilitating high-quality scientific products in compliance with agency procedures.

Outside the federal government, Williamson has been an active member of the American Statistical Association, becoming a fellow in 2004. He has chaired several ASA committees, including the Joint Statistical Meetings Program Committee in 2000, Waller Education Award Committee in 2009, and Karl E. Peace Award Committee in 2014. In 2019, as ASA vice president, he chaired the Professional Issues and Visibility Council that looked at the impact of statistics on society. He currently serves on advisory boards for the Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia Southern University and is an adjunct professor at Georgia Southern University and Emory University.