The National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) simultaneously celebrated the 20th anniversary of its creation and the 10th anniversary of the formation of its affiliates program.
The pre-history of NISS goes back to a 1984 meeting of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences at Lake Tahoe. There, a number of visionaries realized how much the statistical sciences would benefit from deeper engagement in cross-disciplinary research and that an institute was a key component to making this happen. A proposal was sent to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a panel study on cross-disciplinary research. The resulting report, coauthored by Ingram Olkin and Jerome Sacks, was published in 1988.

