I was thrilled to receive an invitation to contribute to the My ASA Story series. It prompted me to reflect on how my career has been intertwined with the ASA through various channels. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much I have benefited from the ASA.

My ASA journey began in the summer of 2015, when I attended my first Joint Statistical Meetings in Seattle during my fourth year as a PhD student at Stanford. It was then that I became an ASA member. Attending that JSM was an eye-opening experience, making me realize how exciting and vibrant statistics is as a discipline. I also presented “Early False Discoveries Along the Lasso Path,” which was perhaps my first academic talk. Not surprisingly, I was nervous while delivering the presentation.

Just one year later, in 2016, I graduated from Stanford and moved to the East Coast to join Wharton as an assistant professor. By chance, my colleagues Larry Brown and Linda Zhao mentioned they had attended my JSM talk in Seattle and were impressed by my research. Had I not attended JSM as a PhD student, I might not have had the opportunity to interview at Wharton! This experience taught me the importance of giving your best at JSM talks, as your future colleagues might be in the audience.

… I can say with certainty the ASA has been an integral part of my professional journey. My encounters and experiences with the ASA are countless, but they all share a common theme: The ASA consistently provides the best possible platform for statisticians to make a difference.

From that moment on, I felt at home within the ASA and realized the value of attending JSM. In return, I hoped to make my contribution by actively organizing sessions at JSM. Perhaps due to my statistical training in the Bay Area, where there is an atmosphere of machine learning and AI, my sessions often focus on emerging topics at the intersection of statistics and machine learning. I have covered subjects such as statistical uncertainty quantification in online learning and privacy-preserving data analysis.

At the upcoming JSM in Portland, I will offer a short course on large language models with my colleagues Emily Getzen and Linjun Zhang and chair a session on the same topic. I am excited about this opportunity provided by the ASA and JSM to contribute to my community, and I look forward to meeting colleagues interested in exploring the possibilities between statistics and AI.

My involvement with the ASA is multifaceted and extends beyond JSM. Earlier this spring, I participated in an ASA town hall about the role of statistics in the future of AI, moderated by Associate Executive Director Donna LaLonde and Executive Director Ron Wasserstein. It was inspiring to see so many colleagues in our community care about the future of our field.

Last year, I gave a talk during the Statistical Learning and Data Science Section monthly webinar series about our experiment at the 2023 International Conference on Machine Learning using statistical methods to improve peer review at machine learning conferences. I have also been an associate editor for the Journal of the American Statistical Association since early last year and had the honor of receiving the ASA Noether Early Career Scholar Award.

Looking back, I can say with certainty the ASA has been an integral part of my professional journey. My encounters and experiences with the ASA are countless, but they all share a common theme: The ASA consistently provides the best possible platform for statisticians to make a difference. I am deeply grateful for the support, inspiration, and sense of belonging this organization has given me throughout my career. To the young generation of statisticians, my advice is that now is the best time to do statistics and unleash your potential. Please actively engage with the ASA. Together, let us shape the future of statistics!