Undergraduates Emily Allen and Benedict Neo present at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research 2023. 

The National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) is dedicated to promoting undergraduate research, scholarship and creative activity in all fields of study by sponsoring an annual conference for students. Unlike meetings of academic professional organizations, this gathering of student scholars welcomes presenters from all institutions of higher learning and from all disciplines. Overall, this conference offers a unique environment for the celebration and promotion of undergraduate student achievement; provides models of exemplary research, scholarship, and creative activity; and offers student career readiness development. 

 

 

Speaker: Emily Allen, Undergraduate

Congratulations to Zhiling Gu! Her paper, "TSSS: A Novel Triangulated Spherical Spline Smoothing for Surface-based Imaging" has been awarded the runners-up (second place) in the Theory and Methods track of the 2023 Statistical Methods in Imaging Student Paper Competition. Along with other award winners, she will be giving an oral presentation on it at SMI 2023, on Monday, May 22, 1:10-2:40pm, in the Graduate Hotel, Minneapolis.

Congratulations to Jarad Niemi, whose promotion to full professor has been approved by the Board of Regents, State of Iowa.

Congratulations to Danica Ommen, whose tenure and promotion to associate professor has been approved by the Board of Regents, State of Iowa. 

The STAT-ers hosted game night on Friday, April 14.  Graduate students, faculty, staff, family, and friends gathered in 3105 Snedecor Hall for an evening of games, including the annual Texas hold'em poker tournament.  Congratulations to Kanishka Goyal, a Mathematics graduate student who defeated last year's champion in the final head-to-head match up.  

Statistics Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Education Amy Froelich was elected to a three-year term as Secretary/Treasurer of Mu Sigma Rho, the national statistics honor society.  Mu Sigma Rho was started at Iowa State in 1968 by a group of statistics faculty.  Professor Froelich has served as Director-at-Large of Mu Sigma Rho since January 1, 2020.

Congratulations to Distinguished Professor William Q. Meeker on winning an Exemplary Faculty Mentor Award for his extraordinary dedication to the success of his faculty mentees.

Congratulations to Statistics Assistant Professor Zhanrui Cai on winning an Institute of Mathematical Statistics New Researcher Travel Award to attend the 2023 Joint Statistical Meetings.  The award covers travel expenses up to $900.

Zachary Swayne and Nathan Rethwisch won 1^st prize in the Fall 2022 Intermediate Statistics Class Project competition for their project Analysis of Vehicular Crashes in Iowa.  Zachary and Nathan are double majors in Data Science and Statistics.  Their work was originally a class project in Heike Hofmann’s DS 202.  The competition was sponsored by the American Statistical Association and the Consortium for Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education.

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 Minnesota Campus in Minneapolis.

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 beyond the ones acquired). This enhances understanding of tissue structure in vivo and can help facilitate better diagnosis.  Congratulations to Subrata for this well-deserved honor!

 

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/

 

and has been assigned the DOI

 

https://doi.org/10.31274/isudp.2023.127