Statistics is an important tool in sorting through information on how human activities are affecting the climate system, as well as how climate change affects natural and human systems, according to a Penn State statistician.
Aleksandra Slavkovic, an associate professor of statistics and public health sciences at Penn State, has been honored with membership in the International Statistical Institute. Members are elected "by virtue of their distinguished contributions to the development or application of statistical methods, or to the administration of statistical services, or the development and improvement of statistical education."
Slavkovic conducts research focusing on developing and applying statistical methods for issues of data privacy and data confidentiality. One goal of her research is to limit the release of sensitive information from statistical databases about individuals and groups, while allowing for accurate statistical analysis of the data. Slavkovic is a lead investigator on the National Science Foundation Cyber-Enabled Innovation and Discovery program for a research project on integrating statistical and computational approaches to privacy.
Mathematical scientists from around the world have been named to the inaugural class of the Fellows of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to mathematical research and scholarship. This inaugural class of 1,119 Fellows represents more than 600 institutions and includes many professors from Penn State University. The Fellows of the AMS designation recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication and utilization of mathematics.
Saryet Kucukemiroglu of York, Pa., will be honored as the student marshal for the Eberly College of Science during Penn State University's summer commencement ceremonies on Saturday, Aug. 11, at the University Park campus. Kucukemiroglu's faculty escort for the commencement exercises will be Durland O. Shumway of the Department of Statistics.
James L. Rosenberger, a professor of statistics at Penn State University, has been elected to the position of Vice President of the American Statistical Association (ASA). The ASA is the world's largest community of statisticians, supporting "excellence in the development, application, and dissemination of statistical science through meetings, publications, membership services, education, accreditation, and advocacy."
David Hunter, professor of statistics at Penn State, has been appointed as head of the University's Department of Statistics. He succeeds Bruce Lindsay, Willaman Professor of Statistics, who had served as head of the department since 2006.
Penn State's C.R. Rao, emeritus holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Statistics, long recognized as one of the world's top statisticians, has been honored with his 35th and 36th honorary doctor of science degrees. The awarding universities are Karnatak University, located in Dharwad, India, and the International Sanskrit University, located in Tirupati, India. Rao was presented with the degrees at ceremonies at the respective universities.
Fingerprints have been used for over a century as a way of identifying criminals. In current practice, however, fingerprint evidence is not permitted in court unless examiners claim absolute certainty that a mark has been left by a particular suspect. The problem is, this courtroom certainty is based purely on expert opinion, which—however well-informed—must in the end be subjective.
An assistant professor at Penn State has created a new statistical model that may enable fingerprint evidence to withstand greater scrutiny in court. Currently, some fingerprints that could be key pieces of evidence in court are not being considered because of shortcomings in the way this evidence is reported. Cedric Neumann, assistant professor of forensic science and statistics at Penn State, has devised a statistical model to enable the weight of fingerprint evidence to be expressed in quantitative terms, paving the way for its full inclusion in the criminal-identification process. Fingerprints have been used for over a century as a way of identifying criminals; however, fingerprint evidence is not currently permitted to be reported in court unless examiners claim absolute certainty that a mark has been left by a particular suspect. This courtroom certainty is based purely on the opinion of experts, formed through years of training and experience, but not on scientific data.
The explosion of digital data is behind the boom in careers based on statistics, including actuarial science, informatics, and machine learning, Altman notes. “These fields have all been very highly ranked for a number of years now,” she explains. “Data are a huge resource, but statisticians are needed to help people make sense of the information gathered.
James Rosenberger, professor of statistics at Penn State, has been honored with a Distinguished Service Award from the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS). The award was presented in August at a reception in Miami, Fla. The NISS Distinguished Service Awards were established by in 2005 to recognize individuals who have given extraordinary service that significantly advances NISS and its mission.
Jia Li, associate professor of statistics at Penn State, and James Z. Wang, professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State, have been awarded the United States patent titled "Real-Time Computerized Annotation of Pictures." Li and Wang developed a unique computer system called ALIPR (Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures in Real-Time) that can suggest, in real time, several words describing the content of any general-purpose photograph using the pixel information alone. The automatic image-tagging system uses novel methods in statistical learning and data mining to link pictorial characteristics with English words.
Runze Li, a professor of statistics at Penn State, has been honored with the Norbert Gerbier-MUMM International Award for 2012 for a paper written with co-authors from other institutions spanning six continents. The paper, "Climate control of terrestrial carbon exchange across biomes and continents," which was published in Environmental Research Letters, examines relationships between climate and the carbon exchange of land-based ecosystems to predict future levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Li, who is the only statistician among the 151 authors of this paper, used the statistical techniques known as mixture regression and two-dimensional kernel regression to analyze the data presented in the paper. The purpose of the Norbert Gerbier-MUMM International Award, which is presented by the World Meteorological Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, is "to encourage and reward annually an original scientific paper on the influence of meteorology in a particular field of the physical, natural, or human sciences, or on the influence of one of these sciences on meteorology."
Dennis Lin, distinguished professor of statistics at Penn State, has been awarded the 2011 Don Owen Award from the American Statistical Association's San Antonio chapter. The president of the chapter, John Schoolfield, presented Lin with the award at the 2011 Conference of Texas Statisticians at Texas A&M University. Lin is recognized for his groundbreaking work in designing statistical experiments called supersaturated designs. These designs provide a major tool for practical use in industry and allow investigation of a large number of variables. He also is well known for his on statistical data mining.
The Penn State Department of Statistics will host the 2011 Rao Prize Conference from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on May 19, in 100 Thomas Building on the University Park campus. This one-day conference, which is free and open to the public, will focus on statistics and probability.
Statistics is an important tool in sorting through information on how human activities are affecting the climate system, as well as how climate change affects natural and human systems, according to a Penn State statistician.
Aleksandra Slavkovic, an associate professor of statistics and public health sciences at Penn State, has been honored with membership in the International Statistical Institute. Members are elected "by virtue of their distinguished contributions to the development or application of statistical methods, or to the administration of statistical services, or the development and improvement of statistical education."
Slavkovic conducts research focusing on developing and applying statistical methods for issues of data privacy and data confidentiality. One goal of her research is to limit the release of sensitive information from statistical databases about individuals and groups, while allowing for accurate statistical analysis of the data. Slavkovic is a lead investigator on the National Science Foundation Cyber-Enabled Innovation and Discovery program for a research project on integrating statistical and computational approaches to privacy.
Mathematical scientists from around the world have been named to the inaugural class of the Fellows of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to mathematical research and scholarship. This inaugural class of 1,119 Fellows represents more than 600 institutions and includes many professors from Penn State University. The Fellows of the AMS designation recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication and utilization of mathematics.
Saryet Kucukemiroglu of York, Pa., will be honored as the student marshal for the Eberly College of Science during Penn State University's summer commencement ceremonies on Saturday, Aug. 11, at the University Park campus. Kucukemiroglu's faculty escort for the commencement exercises will be Durland O. Shumway of the Department of Statistics.
James L. Rosenberger, a professor of statistics at Penn State University, has been elected to the position of Vice President of the American Statistical Association (ASA). The ASA is the world's largest community of statisticians, supporting "excellence in the development, application, and dissemination of statistical science through meetings, publications, membership services, education, accreditation, and advocacy."
David Hunter, professor of statistics at Penn State, has been appointed as head of the University's Department of Statistics. He succeeds Bruce Lindsay, Willaman Professor of Statistics, who had served as head of the department since 2006.
Penn State's C.R. Rao, emeritus holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Statistics, long recognized as one of the world's top statisticians, has been honored with his 35th and 36th honorary doctor of science degrees. The awarding universities are Karnatak University, located in Dharwad, India, and the International Sanskrit University, located in Tirupati, India. Rao was presented with the degrees at ceremonies at the respective universities.
Fingerprints have been used for over a century as a way of identifying criminals. In current practice, however, fingerprint evidence is not permitted in court unless examiners claim absolute certainty that a mark has been left by a particular suspect. The problem is, this courtroom certainty is based purely on expert opinion, which—however well-informed—must in the end be subjective.
An assistant professor at Penn State has created a new statistical model that may enable fingerprint evidence to withstand greater scrutiny in court. Currently, some fingerprints that could be key pieces of evidence in court are not being considered because of shortcomings in the way this evidence is reported. Cedric Neumann, assistant professor of forensic science and statistics at Penn State, has devised a statistical model to enable the weight of fingerprint evidence to be expressed in quantitative terms, paving the way for its full inclusion in the criminal-identification process. Fingerprints have been used for over a century as a way of identifying criminals; however, fingerprint evidence is not currently permitted to be reported in court unless examiners claim absolute certainty that a mark has been left by a particular suspect. This courtroom certainty is based purely on the opinion of experts, formed through years of training and experience, but not on scientific data.
The explosion of digital data is behind the boom in careers based on statistics, including actuarial science, informatics, and machine learning, Altman notes. “These fields have all been very highly ranked for a number of years now,” she explains. “Data are a huge resource, but statisticians are needed to help people make sense of the information gathered.
James Rosenberger, professor of statistics at Penn State, has been honored with a Distinguished Service Award from the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS). The award was presented in August at a reception in Miami, Fla. The NISS Distinguished Service Awards were established by in 2005 to recognize individuals who have given extraordinary service that significantly advances NISS and its mission.
Jia Li, associate professor of statistics at Penn State, and James Z. Wang, professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State, have been awarded the United States patent titled "Real-Time Computerized Annotation of Pictures." Li and Wang developed a unique computer system called ALIPR (Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures in Real-Time) that can suggest, in real time, several words describing the content of any general-purpose photograph using the pixel information alone. The automatic image-tagging system uses novel methods in statistical learning and data mining to link pictorial characteristics with English words.
Runze Li, a professor of statistics at Penn State, has been honored with the Norbert Gerbier-MUMM International Award for 2012 for a paper written with co-authors from other institutions spanning six continents. The paper, "Climate control of terrestrial carbon exchange across biomes and continents," which was published in Environmental Research Letters, examines relationships between climate and the carbon exchange of land-based ecosystems to predict future levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Li, who is the only statistician among the 151 authors of this paper, used the statistical techniques known as mixture regression and two-dimensional kernel regression to analyze the data presented in the paper. The purpose of the Norbert Gerbier-MUMM International Award, which is presented by the World Meteorological Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, is "to encourage and reward annually an original scientific paper on the influence of meteorology in a particular field of the physical, natural, or human sciences, or on the influence of one of these sciences on meteorology."
Dennis Lin, distinguished professor of statistics at Penn State, has been awarded the 2011 Don Owen Award from the American Statistical Association's San Antonio chapter. The president of the chapter, John Schoolfield, presented Lin with the award at the 2011 Conference of Texas Statisticians at Texas A&M University. Lin is recognized for his groundbreaking work in designing statistical experiments called supersaturated designs. These designs provide a major tool for practical use in industry and allow investigation of a large number of variables. He also is well known for his on statistical data mining.
The Penn State Department of Statistics will host the 2011 Rao Prize Conference from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on May 19, in 100 Thomas Building on the University Park campus. This one-day conference, which is free and open to the public, will focus on statistics and probability.
