Statistics Research Experience for Undergraduate Students

Apply to become an undergraduate intern for the Iowa State University Department of Statistics 2023 REU summer program.

2023 REU Program Information

Program Dates: June 12-August 4, 2023

Application Deadline: March 24, 2023

Apply Online: http://bit.ly/3IE7jJ3

Compensation: All admitted students receive a weekly stipend of $550 plus an allowance for travel, housing, and meals.

Contact: Anthony Greiter, learning and development specialist, agreiter@iastate.edu

Ashlan Simpson, a senior in statistics at Iowa State University working at the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence (CSAFE), won first place in the student poster competition at the 2023 South Dakota State University (SDSU) Data Science Symposium.

The symposium was held Feb. 6-7 in Brookings, South Dakota, and hosted by the SDSU Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

Simpson’s poster was titled “Two-Stage Approach for Forensic Handwriting Analysis” and co-authored by Danica Ommen, a CSAFE researcher and assistant professor in statistics at Iowa State.

Joe Zemmels, an Iowa State University statistics graduate student, was one of two outstanding poster winners in the Young Forensic Scientists Forum at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) annual scientific conference. The conference was held February 13-18 in Orlando, Florida.

Zemmels is a student researcher at the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence (CSAFE) and studies under CSAFE researcher Heike Hofmann, a professor of statistics and professor-in-charge of data science at Iowa State University and co-author of the poster. Susan VanderPlas, a CSAFE researcher and assistant professor of statistics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was also a co-author.

Distinguished Professor William Q. Meeker has won the Army Wilks Memorial Award for his work in the development and application of statistical reliability methodology and his mentorship, which has directly benefited the Department of Defense in helping solve issues of national importance.  The Army Wilks Memorial Award – more formally known as the Wilks Award for Contributions to Statistical Methodologies in Army Research, Development, and Testing – was established in 1964 to commemorate the career of Samuel S. Wilks.

On February 25, members of the Department of Statistics came together for food and fun with our International Dinner and Talent Show.  Students, staff, faculty, families, and friends shared favorite foods from their home countries.  Several participants entertained attendees with musical and other performances.  Competitors took part in a Jegichagi / Jianzi showdown.  Enjoy the following photos from the evening!

This year's Statistical Methods in Imaging Conference, the annual meeting of the American Statistical Association Statistics in Imaging Section, features a Founder's talk by Professor Ranjan Maitra of Iowa State's Department of Statistics.  Congratulations to Professor Maitra on being invited to present this lecture!  The conference takes place May 22-24, 2023, at the Graduate Hotel on the University of Minneso

Alicia Carriquiry, Distinguished Professor and President’s Chair in Statistics, has been named Fellow of the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study at Texas A&M University.  The Hagler Institute was established to enhance the research environment at Texas A&M by bringing to campus world-class visitors to interact with their faculty and students.  The list of past Fellows includes many Nobel Prize winners, multiple National Academy members, and other stars in their fields.  Distinguished Professor Carriquiry plans to spend the 2024 spring semester in residence at the Hagler Institute.  Congratulations to Alicia on this outstanding recognition of her many professional accomplishments!

Congratulations to Hyeongseon "Sammy" Jeon on winning the 2022 Korean International Statistical Society's Outstanding Student Paper Competition for his paper "Adjusting for gene-specific covariates to improve RNA-seq analysis".  He and other winners are invited to present their papers at a special contributed session at the 2023 Joint Statistical Meetings in Toronto with the support of a $500 grant from Korean International Statistical Society.

We are very happy to report that Subrata Pal is a winner in the 2023 Student Paper competition of the American Statistical Association (ASA) Sections on Statistical Computing and Graphics for his submission titled "Fast matrix-free methods for model-based personalized synthetic MR imaging" (slightly updated version available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.01532).  The manuscript provides a fast and novel approach to performing synthetic magnetic resonance (MR) imaging (getting better quality images at additional settings beyon

Iowa State University Professor Emeritus Stephen Vardeman and Miami University Professor Emeritus J. Marcus Jobe (ISU PhD, 1984) have made their book Basic Engineering Data Collection and Analysis, originally published by Duxbury/Thompson Learning/Cengage, freely available for download under a (CC BY-NC-SA) 4.0 International license through the Iowa State University Digital Press.  The book is available at

https://www.iastatedigitalpress.com/plugins/books/127/

On January 21, 2023, Professor Zhengyuan Zhu was presented with the 2022 U.S. – Asia Business, Cultural, and Education Leadership Awards’ Certificate of International Education Leadership.  Professor Zhu was honored with the certificate in recognition of his distinguished contributions as an international educator for international exchange on a global scale and his lengthy commitment to the field as demonstrated by purpose, passion, vision and mission.  The certificate was signed by the Honorable Terry Branstad, 12th United States Ambassador to China and 39th and 42nd Governor of Iowa.

Congratulations to the 36 statistics undergraduates who made the Fall 2022 Dean's List!

The Department of Statistics is looking to enroll ~30 graduate students (PhD and MS) in the Fall of 2023. 

We have a variety of resources on our website about our program including

Application deadline for full considering is Jan 15. Apply now!

Congratulations to Professor Daniel Nordman on being named Institute of Mathematical Statistics Managing Editor.  Professor Nordman was named Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2021. 

The C. R. Henderson Fund for Excellence in Predictive Inference and Its Applications is supporting research conducted by Statistics PhD student Danyang Zhang and Statistics Professor Chong Wang.  Zhang and Wang are developing prediction interval methods for predicting wean-to-finish mortality in swine production systems, using support vector machines and mixed-effects split-conformal prediction.  In addition to support from C. R. Henderson Fund, the project receives funding from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Grant #2022-68014-36668. 

Several statistics and data science students – including first-year honors students – are currently participating in research projects in the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence (CSAFE).  Emily Allen (Statistics), Tyler Christians (Data Science), Caroly Coronado-Vargas (Statistics), Tracie-Lynn Lamoreux (Statistics), Craig Orman (Data Science), Aditi Pokharkar (Economics and Data Science), Nathan Rethwisch (Statistics and Data Science) and Ashlan Simpson (Statistics) are learning by doing, and get to see statistics in action.  Students gain expertise in data collection, database management, visualization and exploratory analyses, and of course, various flavors of statistical analyses.  By working side-by-side with CSAFE graduate students, these undergraduate researchers a

With the support of the Ronald J. and S. Doré Mead Fund for Student Experience in Statistics, Tyler Christians worked with Statistics Assistant Professor Kori Khan on a project aimed at understanding the impact forensic evidence has on trial outcomes. Tyler had previously worked to collect data on approximately 60 felony criminal cases that went to trial. For each of these cases, a defendant was charged with between 3 and 28 offenses. This data included information related to the number and types of forensic evidence presented to the jury as well as the jury’s decision on each offense. About half of the cases resulted in guilty decisions for all offenses and about half of the cases resulted in a mix of guilty and not guilty findings for the offenses.

Jarad Niemi, Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics, serves as a co-PI on the Consortium for Cultivating Human and Naturally reGenerative Enterprises.  Among the goals of this grant are to develop the science and economics behind anaerobic digestion to produce renewable natural gas (RNG) from perennial grass and winter crops. An issue with digester usage in Iowa is that winter temperatures slow bacteria metabolism causing reduced production of RNG. 

Dan Nettleton, Department of Statistics chair, has been elected chair-elect of the American Statistical Association’s Caucus of Academic Representatives (CAR).  CAR members include departmental executive officers, such as chairs and heads, of departments of statistics and biostatistics in the United States.  According to the CAR charter, CAR’s purpose is “to promote the statistics discipline within the academic community and provide resources for academic statisticians to successfully advocate for the discipline.”  Nettleton will serve as chair-elect, chair, and past-chair through August of 2025.