To strengthen the connection between the statistical community and National Science Foundation, we continue the series introduced in the May 2023 issue that poses questions to NSF program officers and awardees. This month, the NSF Statistics Program Directors take a closer look at funding research proposals.

This interview with Ginger Holt, senior staff data scientist at DataBricks, and Amarjot Kaur, executive director at Merck, was conducted by Practical Significance co-hosts Donna LaLonde and Ron Wasserstein during a recent podcast. If you missed the show, this is your opportunity to learn about the recently formed ASA Caucus of Industry Representatives, which will help promote statistics and data science in the private and public sectors and provide resources to successfully advocate for the discipline.

The Columbia University Department of Statistics, New York City Metro Area Chapter of the ASA, and ASA Section on Text Analysis sponsored a workshop on large language models during which participants had an in-depth conversation about the roles of statistics in an era of LLMs—not only the opportunities for statistical innovations, but also the potential risks.

Gene Pennello, a statistician, and Frank Samuelson, a physicist, look at the complexity of data-driven medical devices that employ AI algorithms—and the challenges this presents.

Rising high-school senior Jaya Kolluri shares how she thinks AI tools such as ChatGPT can complement traditional teaching methods.