In 2025 Grace Wahba was awarded the International Prize in Statistics in recognition of her groundbreaking work on smoothing splines, which has transformed modern data analysis and machine learning.
mentoring
Nominations Open for Health Science Awards
The Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences Section offers four annual awards: the Young Investigator Award for promising early-career educators or researchers; the Outstanding Teaching Award for excellence in statistics education; the Distinguished Achievement Award for longtime service to the section and ASA; and Best Contributed Paper at JSM Award. Nominations are open for three of them.
Nominations Wanted for Griffith Mentoring Award
The Jeanne E. Griffith Mentoring Award recognizes and encourages mentoring junior staff in the statistical community in federal, state, or local government.
Nalini Ravishanker
Nalini Ravishanker grew up in Chennai, India, in a huge extended family that nurtured her love for mathematics. Inspired by talks by leading statisticians at the University of Madras, she decided to pursue a PhD in statistics.
ASA Establishes Douglas A. Zahn Grant for Advancing Interpersonal Excellence
The ASA has established the Douglas A. Zahn Grant for Advancing Interpersonal Excellence, awarding $2,500 annually to individuals enhancing interpersonal skills in statistics and data science, honoring Zahn’s legacy in statistical consulting and education.
Two NIH Leaders Honored with Griffith Mentoring Award
The ASA’s Government Statistics Section recently awarded the Jeanne E. Griffith Mentoring Award to two women from the National Institutes of Health: Nancy L. Geller, director of the Office of Biostatistics Research at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Clarice R. Weinberg, principal investigator in the biostatistics and computational biology branch of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
NSF Institutes Develop AI for Public Benefit
In his Stats4Good column, David Corliss discusses the NSF’s 25 national artificial intelligence research institutes to create a cohesive approach to AI-related opportunities and risks.
Highlights from the August ASA Board Meeting
The ASA Board convened in August at JSM and approved editor appointments, adopted next year’s budget, and discussed presidential initiatives.
Pilot Program to Allow Exception to One Session Policy at JSM 2025
In a groundbreaking move for JSM, the ASA Membership Council and JSM Policy Committee launched a pilot program allowing select presenters to participate in both technical and professional development sessions in 2025.
‘Practical Significance,’ Take II: With a Little Help from My Friends … Mentoring and the ASA
During a recent episode of the ASA podcast, Practical Significance, Donna LaLonde and Ron Wasserstein interviewed Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar, Ruth Etzioni, and Carolyn Rutter about strengthening and expanding mentoring in the ASA community and the working group.