SAVE THE DATE! Department of Statistics 75th Anniversary 2022
The Department will celebrate its 75th Anniversary on October 1st with opportunities for sharing research, connecting with former colleagues, and networking with current students. We are excited to welcome you back to campus and to celebrate all we have accomplished in the last 75 years. We will also hold an Open House in Snedecor Hall the day prior, September 30th. More details will become available as we get closer to the event. Please see https://www.stat.iastate.edu/75th-anniversary-celebration for the latest information. 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.
Gathering of friends and alums at Joint Statistical Meetings
The department will host a reception for friends and alums of Iowa State Statistics at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Washington, DC, from 5:30-6:30 PM on Tuesday, August 9. The reception will take place in the Supreme Court room of the Marriott Marquis Washington DC (901 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20001). We would love to see you there!
Sarah Nusser honored at retirement party
On Monday, May 2nd the Department of Statistics gathered at Reiman Gardens to honor Sarah Nusser who retired in 2021 after more than three decades at Iowa State. We congratulate Sarah on a wonderful career and thank her for contributing so much to Iowa State and the Department of Statistics.
Those who spoke at the program were: Dan Nettleton (Department Chair), Beate Schmittmann (LAS Dean), Zhengyuan Zhu (Director of CSSM), Curtis Brundy (Associate Librarian), Wayne Fuller (Professor Emeritus), Adina Howe (Associate Professor) and Alicia Carriquiry (Distinguished Professor). 
Sarah Nusser named 2021 AAAS Fellow
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) named Sarah Nusser, professor emerita in the Department of Statistics, as a member of the 2021 class of 564 new AAAS Fellows. Those chosen as fellows are recognized "because of their efforts to advance science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished,” the association announced today.
Sarah Nusser, former vice president for research and professor emerita of statistics was chosen, “For leadership in survey statistics, efforts to improve the reusability and impact of publicly accessible research data, and administrative leadership of research activities.”
Professor Mack Shelley returns to the Department
We are pleased to announce that University Professor Mack Shelley will return to the Department of Statistics beginning this fall. In one sense, Mack never left, but he has had a 0% appointment in Statistics since he became chair of the Department of Political Science in 2014. With his current service as chair of Political Science coming to an end, Mack will return to a positive (15%) appointment in Statistics. He will help the Department of Statistics with our teaching of students majoring in social sciences. Welcome back, Mack!
Alicia Carriquiry featured in Link Magazine
Alicia Carriquiry, Distinguished Professor and President's Chair in Statistics, was recently featured in the College of Liberal Arts and Science's Link Magazine. The article highlights Alicia's work as the director and lead investigator for the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence.
"CSAFE aims to reduce the number of wrongly accused individuals incarcerated in the United States by bringing more “science” to forensic science. Led by Carriquiry, the center and its network of national statisticians, scientists and forensic practitioners are developing objective, reproducible methods to quantify physical evidence from crime scenes." Click the link at the top to read the full article. 
Alicia Carriquiry editor of the book "Statistics in the Public Interest"
Alicia Carriquiry, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Statistics, is one of three editors for the book "Statistics in the Public Interest" which is out now. The book is written in memory of Stephen E. Fienberg and edited by Alicia, Judith M. Tanur, William F. Eddy, and Margaret L. Smykla.
The book explores a mix of original research and reviews in a wide range of topics. With applied and theoretical chapters, historical accounts, and policy-relevant discussions, there is something for everyone. It provides a tour of Steve Fienberg's most important contributions in statistics and policy.
Philip Dixon featured on podcast "Stats + Stories"
The Earth Day episode of the Stats + Stories podcast featured Philip Dixon, Professor in the Department of Statistics. Visit the Stats + Stories site to listen. While you are there, you might also enjoy episodes 91 and 98 featuring Alicia Carriquiry and episode 21 with ISU Statistics PhD Dennis Lock.
The episode with Philip Dixon is titled, "Ecological and Environmental Stats for Earth Day." 
Anna Peterson and Laura Ziegler presented at CAUSE webinar series
Faculty members Anna Peterson and Laura Ziegler presented at the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (CAUSE) seminar series. Their presentation was titled, "Building a Multiple Linear Regression Model with LEGO Brick Data." In the webinar, Peterson and Ziegler presented an innovative activity that uses data about LEGO sets to help students self-discover multiple linear regressions.
During the activity, instructors guided students to predict the price of a LEGO set posted on Amazon.com (Amazon price) using LEGO 
characteristics such as the number of pieces, the theme (i.e., product line), and the general size of the pieces. By starting with graphical displays and simple linear regression, students are able to develop additive multiple linear regression models as well as interaction models to accomplish the task.
Zhanrui Cai hired as assistant professor
Zhanrui Cai was hired as a tenure-eligible assistant professor. Cai received his PhD in Statistics from Penn State and is currently a postdoc at Carnegie Mellon University. Cai will joined the Department in June. His research interests include high dimensional inference, distribution-free inference, machine learning, casual discover, and statistical genetics.
Wayne A. Fuller received IASS Small Area Estimation Award
The International Association of Survey Statisticians has congratulated Professor Wayne A. Fuller on his 2021 Award for Outstanding Contribution to Small Area Estimation. Fuller was awarded the prize at the International Statistical Institute (ISI) satellite conference “BIG4small: SAE 2021 Conference on big data and small area estimation,” which was held September 20–24, 2021.
College and university awards to faculty and staff
Several members of our faculty and staff won well-deserved college and university awards this semester:
- Ranjan Maitra, LAS Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentoring
- Jarad Niemi, ISU Interdisciplinary Team Research Award
- Jarad Niemi, LAS Award for Outstanding Achievement in Extension or Professional Practice
- Dan Nordman, LAS Award for Outstanding Achievement in Research
- Jessica Severe, LAS Merit Excellence Award
2022 Faculty Advancements & Promotions
The Department of Statistics is delighted to announce the elevation of the following faculty members:
Chong Wang promotion to full professor
Farzad Sabzikar tenure and promotion to associate professor
Yumou Qiu tenure and promotion to associate professor
Anna Peterson advancement to full teaching professor
Laura Ziegler advancement to full teaching professor
Graduate program ranked 19th among 101 graduate programs by U.S. News and World Report
Several national publications have ranked or recognized Iowa State University for its academic programs, value, commitment to the public good and entrepreneurial spirit. Among the accolades is the U.S. News and World Report’s 19th ranking of the graduate statistics program.
Research Excellence Award Winners Spring 2022:
Congratulations to our spring 2022 Research Excellence Award Winners:
- Charles Labuzzetta: Charles Labuzzetta is advised by Professor Zhengyuan Zhu. He was selected for developing innovative statistical and machine learning methods to solve land cover classification problems in remote sensing, which include a machine learning based surface water classification algorithm, deep learning based mapping of best management practice for soil and water conservation, and conformal prediction under covariate shift and its application to improve image segmentation for land cover classification.
- Miranda Tilberg: Miranda Tilberg came to us from St Olaf College in the Fall of 2017. She got her MS degree looking at machine learning methods to recognize shoe prints in 2019. For her PhD research, she worked with Philip Dixon on statistical issues associated with animal home ranges. The home range is the area typically used by an animal. The motivation was understanding how dolphins on the Louisiana coast responded to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. She developed a method that provided the first uncertainty estimates for a commonly used estimator of home ranges and a method to cluster home ranges to identify groups of animals with overlapping home ranges. She received a research excellence award for this work in Spring 2022. She received her PhD in May 2022 and has started a job with Travelers Insurance.
- Carlos Llosa Vite: Carlos Llosa was advised by Professor Ranjan Maitra. He was awarded for his pioneering work in the analysis of tensor-variate data by providing computationally practical but theoretically sound approaches to perform linear regression and analysis of variance when both the responses and the predictors have array-variate (tensor-variate) structure. Carlos also developed inference on elliptically contoured tensor-variate distributions that can improve upon the normal in characterizing bitmap images, and help in their learning. Separately, he provided a flexible family of tensor-variate distributions with Fourier covariance structure (FCS). He also contributed a great deal to a National Institute of Justice grant, where the main objective is to identify matching material fragments using fracture mechanics.
Teaching Excellence Award Winners Spring 2022
Congratulations to our spring 2022 Teaching Excellence Award Winners:
Carlos Llosa-Vite, who authored the paper "Reduced-Rank Tensor-on-Tensor Regression and Tensor-variate Analysis of Variance," was selected as the first place winner for the 2022 JSM Section on Imaging Statistics Student Paper Competition. The first place selection won Carlos $1000. The paper, a version of which is available here , provides linear regression and analysis of variance procedures for massively-sized responses and covariates that are in the form of arrays (tensors) and does so in a computationally practical framework.
Carlos Llosa-Vite's paper "Tensor-variate Elliptically Contoured distributions with Application to Image Learning" was selected for runner-up recognition in the Statistical Methods in Imaging 2022 student paper competition. This paper develops elliptically-contoured distributions that generalize the normal distribution for array-variate data. His approach more accurately predicts images of cats and dogs in the Animal Faces-HQ database, and also better characterizes gender, age and ethnic origin in the Labeled Faces of the Wild dataset.Graduate student Subrata Pal won Outstanding Student Presentation Award Honorable Mention at Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Environmental Science
Subrata Pal delivered a presentation at the 21st Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Environmental Science, held as part of the 102nd American Meteorological Society Annual meeting. He was selected as a winner of the Outstanding Student Presentation Award: Honorable Mention. His talk was titled, "Blowin' in the wind- Diagnosing the Probability that a Severe Thunderstorm Wind Report is Truly Due to Sever Intensity Wind Event"
Graduate student Dae Gyu Jang won ASA GSS/SRMS/SSS Student Paper Competition
Congratulations to Dae Gyu Jang for being selected as one of the winners of the ASA GSS/SRMS/SSS Student Paper Competition. Dae Gyu received a $1000 award and was invited to present his research on A-Optimal Split Questionnaire Designs at the 2022 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM).
Congratulations to Guoliang Ma on winning the 2022 ASA Business and Economics Statistics Section Student Paper Award. Guoliang's paper is titled, "Conditional Return Distribution: Quantile Regression with Machine Learning."
The award-winning students presented their papers at the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in a Topic-Contributed session, Winners: Business and Economic Statistics Student Paper Awards, sponsored by the B&E Section. The recipients also received a cash award.
Department hosted graduation celebration for graduating students
On May 12th, the Department hosted a gathering on the southwest lawn of Snedecor Hall to recognize the graduating MS and PhD students. The graduating students said a few words about their future plans while everyone enjoyed ice cream from the ISU Creamery.
Department hosts regional conference on teaching statistics
On May 25, the Department of Statistics hosted a regional conference on teaching statistics in conjunction with eCOTS (electronic Conference On Teaching Statistics). The event was organized by Statistics faculty members Laura Ziegler, Anna Peterson, and Ulrike Genschel. The conference’s keynote talk was given by Advanced Placement Statistics Chief Reader-Designate Barb Barnet, who is an ISU Statistics alum and professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin Platteville. We had great participation from across the state of Iowa, including several high school teachers and many community college instructors, as well as several alums who teach at liberal arts colleges in the Midwest. We had interesting discussions on topics like diversity, equity, and inclusion in data science and statistics; how the pandemic changed our approach to teaching; statistical significance and the p-value controversy; and what topics belong in an introductory statistics class.
Thanks to Laura, Anna, and Ulrike for organizing and running a great event! We look forward to hosting another regional eCOTS conference in 2024.
Statistics Department hosted spring breakfast
The Statistics Social Committee hosted a spring breakfast at Inis Grove Park on Saturday, May 30th.
On Friday, April 22nd STAT-ers, the Statistics graduate student organization, hosted a departmental game night in Snedecor 3105.
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