The ASA is a large and diverse organization, bringing together statisticians working in many areas. Each area may make use of different methodologies and applications, so it is a good idea for all statisticians to join a section or interest group (IG) to develop professional skills in the areas of their interest.

Although we will only be able to connect with each other virtually, ASA President Wendy Martinez is looking forward to our first virtual JSM and doing some unique and creative activities. Here, she talks about what she is most looking forward to.

Katherine (Kathy) Ensor, Noah G. Harding Professor of Statistics in the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University, has been elected the 117th president of the American Statistical Association. The ASA membership also elected Matilde Sanchez-Kam, associate director of analytics and informatics in the Office of Biostatistics of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the US Food and Drug Administration, ASA vice president.

Amstat News regularly profiles government statisticians. For this issue, we feature two leaders from the statistics group at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

It’s not often statisticians get to shout, “Stop the presses,” but that’s what longtime ASA members Steve Rigdon and Ronald Fricker found themselves doing earlier this year. Just as their book, Monitoring the Health of Populations by Tracking Disease Outbreaks: Saving Humanity from the Next Plague—the latest in the ASA’s collaborative series with CRC Press—was going to the printer in early 2020, news was emerging about the novel coronavirus.