This month, we’re spotlighting Jovana Mitic, a PhD statistics student at Clemson. She wants to be a data scientist or applied statistician doing modeling that actually gets used, particularly in public health applications.
Serbia
Aleksandra (Seša) Slavkovic
Aleksandra (Seša) Slavkovic was born and raised in Čačak, Serbia, where she enjoyed mathematics but also sports, music, and dance. In fact, while a student at Duquesne University, she was supported by the Tamburitzan Scholarship and performed with this unique and culturally diverse performance ensemble. Slavkovic met Steve Fienberg, who recruited her to the doctoral program in statistics, while she was pursuing a master’s in human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon. She is now professor of statistics and associate dean for graduate education at the Penn State Eberly College of Science.
Peace Through Statistics
The list of recent Nobel Peace Prize laureates goes as follows: 2009—Barack H. Obama, president of the United States of America; 2010—Liu Xiaobo, Chinese dissident; 2011—Miodrag Lovrić (Serbia), Jasmin Komić (Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Ksenija Dumičić (Croatia), statisticians.
That’s a joke, isn’t it? Actually, no, but a possible (perhaps not very likely) outcome for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize award. Lovrić, Komić, and Dumičić were among the 241 nominations (188 individuals and 53 organizations) entered by the February 1, 2011, deadline for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. What led to the nomination of a group of three statisticians for such a prestigious award?