Fall 2021 Publication Highlights
Click here to read more about our many papers published or accepted for publication this fall.
Heike Hofmann selected for the 2022 Women Impacting ISU calendar
Professor Heike Hofmann has been selected for the 2022 Women Impacting ISU calendar. Hofmann is one of twelve women selected for the calendar, in recognition of her dedication and contributions to the University.
The 2022 calendar will be officially unveiled during a reception recognizing the honorees on Tuesday, Jan. 25, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union.
Click here to read more.
Song Xi Chen, Professor Emeritus, elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
On November 18th, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering announced the results of the 2021 academician co-election. Professor Song Xi Chen, Professor Emeritus of the Statistics Department, who currently works from the Guanghua School of Management of Peking University in Beijing, was elected as the academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. A total of 65 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and 84 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering were elected in this co-election.
Click here to read more.
Jae-Kwang Kim, LAS Dean's Professor in the Department of Statistics, published the second edition of his book, "Statistical Methods for Handling Incomplete Data."
Due to recent theoretical findings and advances in statistical computing, there has been a rapid development of techniques and applications in the area of missing data analysis. Statistical Methods for Handling Incomplete Data covers the most up-to-date statistical theories and computational methods for analyzing incomplete data.
Click here to read more.
Graduate student, Audrey McCombs, co-authored paper on CDC vaccine rollout, featured on front page of The Conversation
Audrey McCombs, co-major Ph.D. candidate in Ecology and Statistics, co-authored a paper titled "Evaluation of the United States COVID-19 vaccine allocation strategy" which was published in The Public Library of Science (PLOS) One. The paper was accompanied by a summary article, which made its way to the front page of The Conversation.
McCombs co-authored the paper with Claus Kadelka and Rafiul Islam, both from the Mathematics department at Iowa State, Tamer Oraby from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Mohammad Mihrab Chowdhury from Texas Tech University, Mohammad Al-Mamun from West Virginia University and Michael Tyshenko from the University of Ottawa. 
Graduate student, Carlos Llosa-Vite, wins People's Choice Award at Three-Minute Thesis Competition
Congratulations to Carlos Llosa-Vite for winning the People's Choice Award at the Iowa State University Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition finals held on October 28, 2021. The People's Choice award is based on viewers of the competition voting their preference. Carlos presented his 3MT presentation titled, "Assessing Suicide Risk Using Statistics." You can see his presentation, as well as that of other awardees on the 3MT website.
Visit the extended article to read a Q&A with Llosa-Vite.
Alum Jon Hobbs won Lew Allen Award at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Jon Hobbs, Department of Statistics alum, is the recipient of this year's Lew Allen Award at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Hobbs completed a co-major PhD in statistics and meteorology from Iowa State in 2013. He started at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2014 as a postdoctoral researcher and advanced to his current position of data scientist in 2016.
The Lew Allen Award is the most prestigious early career award that JPL offers. It comes with a monetary prize, and a research stipend to be used by the awardee to conduct research of his/her choice. Dr. Hobbs was selected for outstanding accomplishments in research and development of uncertainty quantification approaches for atmospheric retrievals.
Department of Statistics Observes Green Dot Awareness Day
The Statistics Department chose 10/20 as their day to represent their participation in the Green Dot Awareness Initiative on campus by wearing green. Green Dots can be found around Snedecor Hall this month to state their willingness to learn and understand how to help raise awareness of emotional and sexual violence on campus and beyond.
A green dot is any choice, behavior, word or attitude that promotes safety for everyone and communicates utter intolerance for power-based person violence in our Iowa State Univesity community. A green dot is anything you do to make our community safer. 
Faculty and staff participate in group hike
On October 5th, department staff, faculty, and their families met up for a group hike on the Reactor Woods trail in North Ames. After the hike, participants enjoyed homemade ice cream provided by Karen Nettleton.
Click here to see more pictures from the event.
First-year Statistics graduate students participate in ice cream social
On September 5th, Department Chair, Dan Nettleton, hosted a gathering at his house to welcome first-year Statistics graduate students for homemade ice cream.
Click here to see more pictures from the event.
The department hosted a fall picnic with games and food for students, staff, and faculty. The picnic featured lawn games and boxed lunches in the Maple Shelter at Brookside Park.
Click here to see more pictures from the event.
Ranjan Maitra began two-year term as Associate Chair for Research for the Department of Statistics
The intent of this new position is to support faculty in ways that will strengthen the department's research enterprise and help faculty obtain external funding for their research. Professor Maitra joined the faculty of the Department of Statistics in 2003. He is the winner of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and has received external funding from other federal sponsors, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Institute of Justice, the National Institutes of Health, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Students honored with awards at opening seminar
Several student awards were announced during the department’s welcome seminar on the first day of class (August 23).
Click here to see more photos and the list of award winners.
Department welcomes one visiting scholar and three postdoctoral researchers
This semester, the Department was joined by one visiting scholar, Keila Gonzalez Gomez, and three postdoctoral researchers, Seonghun Cho, Yoon-Bae Jun and Stephanie Reinders. Stephanie works with the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence (CSAFE) and Distinguished Professor Alicia Carriquiry, Seonghun is working with LAS Dean's Professor Jae Kwang-Kim, Yoon-Bae is working with LAS Dean's Professor Zhengyuan Zhu and Keila was working with University Professor Derrick Rollins.
Click here to read more.
William Q. Meeker authored two books in 2021
Meeker released the second edition of his book 'Statistical Methods for Reliability Data' along with authors Luis A. Escobar and Francis G. Pascual. He also released the book 'Achieving Product Reliability' with authors Necip Doganaksoy and Gerald J. Hahn.
Danica Ommen co-authored article on evaluating handwriting, featured in Journal of Forensic Sciences
Professor Danica Ommen co-authored article titled "Use of an Automated System to Evaluate Feature Dissimilarities in Handwriting Under a Two-Stage Evaluative Process." The study repurposed a commercially available automated system to generate empirical distributions for ranking feature dissimilarity scores among pairs of handwritten phrases.
Professor Philip Dixon was appointed to the National Academy of Science Committee on Independent Scientific Review of Everglades Restoration Progress. The Committee meets two to three times annually to receive briefings on the current status of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, scientific issues involved in implementing the plan, and natural system restoration progress.
Xiongtao Dai awarded grant from the National Science Foundation
In July, Professor Xiongtao Dai received a grant award from the National Science Foundation. The grant-funded Xiongtao's collaborative research with Sara Lopez-Pintado from Northeastern University and their research titled "Halfspace Depth for Object and Functional Data."
Congratulations to Research Excellence Award Winners for Fall 2021
Congratulations to Jiaming Qiu, Matt Stuart, and Yifan Zhu, winners of Research Excellence Awards this fall. Quoting from the Graduate College website: "The purpose of these awards is to recognize graduate students for outstanding research accomplishments as documented in their theses and dissertations. These students are also expected to be academically superior and able not only to do research, but also to develop a well-written product. The intent of this program is to recognize "the best of the best" graduating students who have submitted theses and dissertations."
Click here to read more about the awardees.
Wayne A. Fuller Scholarship awarded to Sebastian McCrimmon
Sebastian McCrimmon was the recipient of the 2021-2022 Wayne A. Fuller Scholarship. McCrimmon joined Iowa State in the fall of 2021 after earning a B.A. in Economics from the University of Southern California.
Sebastian said, "I was thrilled to receive the Wayne A. Fuller Scholarship. It was an honor to win an award that celebrates Dr. Fuller’s lifelong commitment to scholarship and mentorship. Since coming to Iowa State, I’ve relished learning more about Dr. Fuller’s research and hearing stories about the tremendous impact that he had with so many graduate students. The scholarship played a huge role in my decision to come to Iowa State. I’ve had a great first semester. I’ve really enjoyed each of my classes, the collaborative environment among the graduate students and my experience working as a TA. I’m so grateful for the scholarship. Thank you to Dr. Fuller, the Iowa State Statistics Department and all of the donors who made this award possible."Ronald J. and S. Dorè Mead Fund for Student Experience in Statistics awardees
The department is very pleased to offer our students financial support from the new Ronald J. and S. Dorè Mead Fund for Student Experience in Statistics to both Miranda Tilberg and Debosmita Kundu. In addition to providing consulting, research, and other work experiences, the fund also enables supported students to learn about the Rasch model, which has been of great interest to Ron Mead for many years. Ron is an ISU alum, earning BS and MS degrees in Statistics before moving to the University of Chicago for a PhD in Educational Assessment, Testing, and Measurement. We are grateful to Ron and Dorè for creating the Mead Fund!
Click here to read more about the awardees. 
Department of Statistics 75th Anniversary 2022
The Department will celebrate its 75th Anniversary early next fall with opportunities for sharing research, connecting with former colleagues, and networking with current students. We are excited to welcome you back to campus next year and to celebrate all we have accomplished in the last 75 years. More details will become available as we get closer to the event. If you would like to pre-rsvp to indicate your interest in participation, please fill out your information on the attached form.
Click here to indicate interest in attending.
Thank you for reading the Fall 2021 newsletter. We appreciate financial support from friends of ISU Statistics, if you wish to donate, please click here.