I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my ASA story with others, but first a few words about who I am. I’m a professor of statistics at the University of Leuven in Belgium. The university is situated in the Flemish (Dutch)-speaking part of Belgium and is among the older universities in Europe (600 years old in 2025).
Before moving to Leuven, I held faculty positions at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve (in the French part of Belgium)—where I still have a part-time position—at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, and at Penn State University in the United States. My main research interests are survival analysis, non- and semiparametric regression, measurement error problems, quantile regression, and goodness-of-fit tests, among others, which I study mostly from a methodological/theoretical point of view. But I also enjoy working on biomedical and economic applications.
My ASA story started in 1999, exactly 25 years ago. After finishing my PhD at the University of Hasselt in Belgium, I was hired as an assistant professor by the statistics department of Penn State University in 1998 and soon after decided to become an ASA member. It seemed to me the most natural thing to do since I liked to be informed about and involved in the statistics community.
My first JSM was in Baltimore in 1999, and I remember I was impressed (and a bit overwhelmed) by the size of the conference and the diversity of topics covered. Although I moved back to Europe one year later, I’ve remained an ASA member ever since and have attended many JSMs.
Being a member of the ASA allows me to stay connected with the largest statistics community in the world and especially to be part of its immense network of statisticians and data scientists. The ASA has been invaluable in my career ever since I started. Not only do I enjoy the yearly JSM, which is an excellent way to reconnect with colleagues I don’t see very often and meet new ones, but I also love going to the smaller-scale conferences and workshops the ASA organizes, particularly the ones organized by the sections.
Personally, I love the conferences organized by the Nonparametric Statistics and Lifetime Data Science sections. I get to meet so many researchers working on topics very much related to my own research. Traveling overseas for these conferences is less straightforward than for conferences in Europe, but I always find it worth the effort and time.
I served as chair-elect and chair of the Nonparametric Statistics Section in 2017 and 2018, respectively, during which I learned much about the organization of the section and the importance of enthusiastic volunteers to keep it going. Volunteers are invaluable to our statistical society. I became an ASA Fellow in 2013 and am very grateful for this honor.
Currently, I serve on the Committee on International Relations in Statistics and as an associate editor of JASA. I also feel privileged to be the international representative to the ASA Board of Directors. My term on the board started last year, and it has been an interesting and rewarding experience so far. By serving as the international representative, I hope to make valuable contributions to the non-US-based members of the ASA, who often have different needs and expectations than members from the United States.
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