Norman Phillip Ross, pioneering chief statistician of the US Environmental Protection Agency and ASA fellow, passed away in November, leaving a legacy in environmental statistics and public health.
University of Maryland
Obituary: Herbert Withers Ware II
Longtime ASA member Herbert Withers Ware II passed away in late April.
Data Management Standard Operating Procedures Survey Among ASA Members
This survey was conducted to investigate data management approaches and practices within the ASA community. The survey’s objective was to discern their needs for services and support, with the ultimate goal of using the results to develop data management tools that enhance support for researchers funded by the Public Health Service.
2024 Waksberg Award Recipient Announced; Nominations Sought for 2025
In 2001, the journal Survey Methodology established an annual invited paper series in honor of Joseph Waksberg to recognize his contributions to survey statistics and methodology. Each year, a prominent survey statistician is chosen to write a paper that reviews the development and current state of an important topic in survey statistics and methodology and reflects the mixture of theory and practice that characterized Waksberg’s work.
Denise A. Abreu
Growing up, Denise Abreu’s favorite subject was math. Thinking math and computer science were the same thing, she attended the State University of New York at Stony Brook to major in computer science. To her amazement, she genuinely enjoyed deriving maximum likelihood estimators, finding means and standard deviations, and doing matrix algebra more than she did programing, thus she switched majors. Today, Abreu is a mathematical statistician who has served within the federal statistical system for more than 23 years, first at the Census Bureau and then at the US Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Calandra Tate Moore
Calandra Tate Moore was always drawn to the mathematical sciences. She recalls regularly pretending to be a math teacher as a child and being excited about timed math skills tests. By the time she reached her senior year, she had taken all the mathematics classes available at her high school. Eventually, her love for math impelled her to pursue three degrees and spend her career evolving what it means to “do math” and manifesting what you can do with a math degree. With more than two decades of experience in academia and the federal government, Moore has conducted research on a wide range of mathematical and statistical applications. Currently, as a technical leader in video, image, speech, and text analytics research for the US Department of Defense, her work focuses on human language technology.
Biometrics Section Grant Helps Introduce Field to High-School Students
Biometrics Section member Michelle Shardell developed a virtual introduction to biostatistics for sophomores. Upon evaluation, more than 90 percent of responders would recommend the session, and interest in pursuing additional coursework or degree programs in biostatistics increased.
Meet Emilda B. Rivers, Director of the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics
Emilda Rivers directs NCSES, the principal statistical agency housed as a division within the National Science Foundation’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic Directorate. We asked her why this position appealed to her, what she views as the biggest challenges facing the agency, and what she believes are the agency’s greatest accomplishments.
Monica Jackson
Monica Jackson began her research career when she was an undergraduate student at Clark Atlanta University. Since then, she has, as a spatial statistician, worked on applying her spatial techniques to a wide variety of medical problems. Now she is invested in developing research programs for undergraduate students.