STATSTA NEWS September 2009 Volume 14 Message from the Department Head

Jim Rosenberger returned in the Spring as the keynote speaker for our annual Acting Department Head, Fall 2009 Alumni Workshop. She has been working at Rand Greetings from the Corporation since graduation and is currently also a visiting Department of Statistics this scholar at the Peabody College of Education, at Vanderbilt Fall! We invite you to enjoy the University. As the network of past, present and future news of happenings here in Happy faculty and staff members and students grows, we want to Valley about our faculty and keep these connections alive. We are planning to write a students. Read about the multiple history of the department and publish a dynamic version on successes of our faculty reported in our web site. Stay tuned for a request for photos and these pages, and the many poster updates from when you were in the department, and links to sessions and contributed papers presented by our graduate the present. students. I am acting department head this Fall semester, to allow Of equal interest is the News from our alumni who Bruce Lindsay to accept the Distinguished Visitor Award at return for special occasions. Mark Becker, 1985 Ph.D., the Department of Statistics, University of Auckland, in received the Outstanding Science Alumni Award this Fall New Zealand. He and Laura Simon were enjoying the from the Eberly College of Science. His latest achievement coming of spring down under as an early winter covered was being installed as the 7th president of the Georgia State Centre County with a 100-year record snowfall in mid University this Fall. Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar, 1999 Ph.D., October.

Bruce Lindsay INSIDE this issue Department Head Greetings from Down Under! (I mean the equator, not Jim) Outreach 2 Faculty News 3 It is a pleasure to have this opportunity to thank Jim Alumni News 14 Rosenberger publicly for his service as Department Head Student News 16 this fall semester. It is also a pleasure to introduce Personal Corner 20 you to the many things the Department has accomplished Contributions 21 over the last 12 months. For this I also give thanks to Coming Attractions 22 Barbara Freed for her fine editorial work. I think that after reading this edition of STAT NEWS you will agree with me that "All is well in Happy Valley!"

Department of Statistics  The Pennsylvania State University  326 Thomas Building,  University Park, PA 16802 Tel (814) 865-1348 Fax (814) 863-7114 www.stat.psu.edu

Newsletter 1 From the Director of Outreach in the Department of Statistics

On June 30, 2009 we announced the opening of our Master of Applied Statistics (MAS) for online students and began accepting applications. The MAS Online program is a natural sequel to the Certificate in Applied Statistics which we have been offering to online students since 2006, and requires the completion of 12 credits. We marked this milestone in our online development by sponsoring a booth at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Washington, D.C. in August to get the information out to statisticians in industry and government. We hoped they would recommend it to their colleagues who could benefit from additional continuing education in applied statistics. We are also planning to have a display booth at the ENAR meetings in New Orleans in March 2010. The Online MAS program requires 30 credits and provides the same set of potential students the opportunity to complete a degree without leaving their current places of employment.

Why are we committed to putting our MAS program online? The answer, in the title of the August 5, 2009 New York Times article: “For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics,” says it best, as we stated on our recent NSF grant request seeking funds to provide scholarships for MAS students. The workforce demand for those with advanced skills in statistics spans government, academia and industry. The Business, Industry, and Government 2007 Salary Survey identifies a wide range (more than 15 categories) of employers, from pharmaceutical and computer software companies to those within local, state, and federal governments and those emphasizing the rapid changing pace of communications. Using data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Milken Institute, an independent economic think tank, SmartMoney magazine recently published an article citing top college majors linked to growing industries. Statistics has been identified as one of five majors that are closely tied to growing industries.

Growth in the Certificate Program: In the 2008/09 academic year, seven (7) students have completed the Certificate program so far and received their certificates, compared to twenty (20) in the 2007/08 academic year. Interest in the Certificate program continues to grow. We expect these numbers to plateau, as we emphasize on our admission web page, with information about the requirements needed for students with the appropriate prerequisites and ability to successfully complete the program. The number of new applications in 2008/09 was 245 compared to 151 in 2007/08, a 62% increase. However, more important was the enrollment in our online classes, which totaled 455 students in 2008/09, versus 350 in 2007/08, a 30% increase.

Regardless of the numbers, our commitment to this program stems from the impression we have from these students that making these applied statistics courses available online serves an important need for upgrading the skills of workers who are finding ever increasing challenges for converting data to knowledge and the recognition that statistical methods provide powerful tools for accomplishing these tasks. It has been an important part of our educational and service mission to provide access to our courses for students not only at Penn State, but to citizens of Pennsylvania, the USA and the world. The mode of delivery through the online World Campus has opened this opportunity to a much larger audience, by removing the geographical barrier of location. Indeed the temporal barrier of time has been reduced, since our courses are all offered in a synchronous format, which allows the students to access the material anytime during the day, and most deadlines operate on a weekly schedule.

- James L. Rosenberger (Phone: 814 865-1340; email: [email protected])

Newsletter 2

FACULTY NEWS

New Faculty

Dennis Lin Professor of Statistics Dennis Lin's research focuses on statistical methodologies related to business, industry, and government. In particular, much of his work has been in the area of data mining; experimental design; quality assurance, including Six Sigma, a particular quality assurance method; statistical process control; reliability; and response-surface methodology, a technique for examining the relationships between explanatory and response variables and subsequently optimizing the response variables.

Lin also uses supersaturated design, which allows him to investigate many variables using a relatively small number of experimental runs, and Kalman filter, a tool used in engineering applications ranging from radar to computer vision. To do his work, Lin makes use of statistical tools, such as statistical modeling, number theory, Bayesian inference, optimal-design theory, optimization, and time-series analysis. He currently is devoting much of his time to working on problems related to radio frequency identification (RFID) and Internet search engines.

Prior to becoming a professor in the Department of Statistics in Penn State's Eberly College of Science in fall 2009, Lin was, and will remain until June 2010, the University Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain and Statistics in Penn State's Smeal College of Business beginning in 2005. He previously had been a professor of management science and statistics from 1998 to 2004 and an associate professor of management science and statistics from 1995 to 1998. Lin was an associate professor at the University of Tennessee from 1993 to 1995, a visiting scientist at the IBM Watson Research Center from 1993 to 1994, and an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee from 1989 to 1993.

Lin earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics at the National Tsing-Hua University in Taiwan in 1981 and a Ph.D. degree in statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988.

Lin has won numerous honors and awards, including a Faculty Scholar Medal from Penn State in 2004 and the Mercator Visiting Professorship Award from the German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) program in 2008. He was named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1998, a Fellow of the American Society for Quality in 2006, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute in 1995, and a Fellow of The Royal Statistical Society in 1993. In 2008, he was named the Chang-Jiang Scholar at the Renmin University of China by the Chinese government's Department of Education. Lin is the author of nearly 150 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and of several book chapters. He holds two patents, and he has presented talks at numerous conferences worldwide. He currently is a co-editor of the journal Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry and an associate editor of various top-ranked journals, including Technometrics, Statistica Sinica, Journal of Quality Technology, Journal of Data Science, Journal of Statistics and Its Applications, and Journal of Statistical Theory and Practice. Lin is an Honorary Chair Professor at various universities, including the National Chengchi University and the National Sun Yet- Sen University in Taiwan, and Fudan University, the XiAn Statistical Institute, and Renmin University in China.

Newsletter 3

Faculty Highlights

Infectious Disease Dynamics is at Naomi Altman Named http://www.cidd.psu.edu/ of Georgia, Resources for the Future Fellow of the and the World Health Organization. American Statistical Bryan Grenfell, Penn State alumni Murali Haran wins Association professor of biology, is one of two New Researcher's In 2009, Naomi Altman has been co-principal investigators named in Award to attend named a Fellow of the American the grant. SAMSI in Fall Statistical Association due to her Grenfell, a population biologist Murali Haran will be a Statistics outstanding contributions to the who is studying the seasonal and Applied Mathematical Sciences statistical profession. fluctuations of measles epidemics in Niger, will work with his Penn State Institute (SAMSI) New Researcher colleagues Edward Holmes, Fellow during the fall 2009 semester Murali Haran professor of biology, Matt Ferrari, at the SAMSI ‘Space-Time Analysis for Environmental Mapping, Collaborating on research associate in biology, Ottar Bjornstad, professor of entomology Epidemiology and Climate Change’ Multi-Center, Multi- and biology, Murali Haran, program. Million Dollar Grant assistant professor of statistics, Reka Murali reports that ‘This SAMSI Gates Foundation Grant Albert, associate professor of physics program has to do with space-time Funds Infectious Disease and biology, and Alan MacEachren, modeling with a particular emphasis Project professor of geography. Their on climate change and disease collaboration centers on Penn State's modeling, which lines up nicely with Penn State Public Information Center for Infectious Disease my projects with geosciences and Thursday, August 21, 2008 Dynamics. CIDD people at Penn State and the Penn State researchers will be part of The epidemic models they grants associated with each group.’ an inter-national team led by the develop will be designed to fit the University of Pittsburgh Graduate prevalence, incidence and geographic School of Public Health to help spread patterns of past epidemics in Debashis Ghosh One evaluate new vaccines that will have developing countries, and will help of Researchers the best chances of stopping the prevent future infectious disease global outbreaks of infectious Discovering epidemics by optimizing vaccine diseases. The project has received a Biomarker Linked to strategies for particular diseases and $10 million grant from the Bill and regions. Aggressive Prostate Melinda Gates Foundation. Initially, the project will focus on Cancer The Vaccine Modeling Initiative evaluation of new vaccine technol- is a research partnership among Penn State Live ogies for influenza, measles and infectious disease modeling teams at February 11, 2009 dengue, a mosquito-borne infection. the University of Pittsburgh, Penn Researchers from Penn State Later, the project will develop State and Imperial College London, University and the University of vaccine models of epidemic headquartered at Pitt's Graduate Michigan have identified a group of pertussis, rotavirus, polio, pneumo- School of Public Health. The project small molecules, called metabolites, coccus, malaria, tuberculosis and also involves collaborations with whose presence in urine indicates other infections. world leading infectious disease that a patient has prostate cancer. The ultimate goal is to guide experts, computational modelers and According to the American public health experts across the globe public health officials at Johns Cancer Society, more than 186,000 in making decisions about vaccine Hopkins University, the Pittsburgh Americans will be diagnosed with strategies that are most likely to Supercomputing Center, Medecins prostate cancer this year and nearly succeed. Sans Frontieres Epicentre, University 29,000 will die from the disease. The The Penn State Center for team's findings could lead to a simple

Newsletter 4 test that would help doctors deter- detected in the urine, and the a member organization which fosters mine which prostate cancers are researchers hope that a simple urine the development and dissemination slow-growing and which require test may one day be developed to of the theory and applications of immediate, aggressive treatment. screen for prostate cancer. However, statistics and probability. The IMS Results of the study were published the team's results are preliminary at has 4500 active members throughout in the Feb. 12 issue of the journal this point and will need years of the world. Nature. further testing and development Approximately 5% of the current "Our research has identified a before this technology would be IMS membership has earned the potential biomarker that can detect available for use with patients. status of fellowship. prostate cancer and determine The research team is led by senior whether or not it is aggressive," said study author Arul Chinnaiyan, who is Jia Li One of Debashis Ghosh, a Penn State the director of the Michigan Center Researchers Teaching associate professor of statistics and for Translational Pathology and the Computers to Search one of the paper's authors. Ghosh is a S.P. Hicks Endowed Professor of for Photos Based on statistician who focuses on design- Pathology at the University of Their Contents and to ing, interpreting, and analyzing data Michigan Medical School. The team Rate Their Quality from genomic and cancer studies. includes researchers at the University ECoS Science Journal, Fall 2009 "The experiments generated a flood of Michigan, Metabolon Inc. and A pair of Penn State researchers has of data, and without statistics, none Penn State. This research was fund- developed a statistical approach, of it would have made any sense," he ed by the National Cancer Institute called Automatic Linguistic Indexing said. Early Detection Research Network, of Pictures in Real-Time (ALIPR), The researchers looked at 1,126 the National Institutes of Health, an that one day could make it easier to metabolites across 262 samples of MTTC grant, the Burroughs search the Internet for photographs. tissue, blood, or urine associated Welcome Foundation and the Doris The public can participate in with benign prostate tissue, early- Duke Charitable Foundation. improving ALIPR’s accuracy by stage prostate cancer, and advanced - visiting a designated Web site - or metastatic -- prostate cancer. (http://www.alipr.com), uploading They identified about 10 metabolites Runze Li Named IMS photographs, and evaluating whether that were present more often in Fellow the keywords that ALIPR uses to diseased samples than in benign describe the photographs are News Release/Contact: Elyse Gustafson samples. appropriate. [email protected] August 31, 2009 One metabolite in particular, ALIPR works by teaching Runze Li, Professor of Statistics, has sarcosine, appeared to be one of the computers to recognize the contents been named Fellow of the Institute of strongest indicators of advanced of photographs, such as buildings, Mathematical Statistics (IMS). An prostate cancer. Levels of sarcosine, people, or landscapes, rather than by induction ceremony took place which is an amino acid, were searching for keywords in the August 3, 2009 at the Joint Statistical elevated in 79 percent of the surrounding text, as is done with Meetings/IMS Annual Meeting in metastatic prostate cancer samples most current image-retrieval systems. Washington DC. and in 42 percent of the early-stage The team recently received a patent Professor Li received the award cancer samples. Sarcosine was not for an earlier version of the for fundamental contributions to found in the cancer-free samples. approach, called ALIP, and is in the variable selection in high-dimension- "The amount of sarcosine in urine process of obtaining another patent al modeling, for significant was correlated with the for the more sophisticated ALIPR. contributions to semiparametric aggressiveness of the prostate They hope that eventually ALIPR regression for longitudinal data, and cancer," said Ghosh. can be used in industry for automatic for excellent editorial service. In the study, sarcosine was a tagging or as part of Internet search Each Fellow nominee is assessed better indicator of advancing disease engines. by a committee of his/her peers for than the traditional test for prostate- “Our basic approach is to take a the award. In 2009, after reviewing specific antigen, or PSA, that large number of photos — we started 39 nominations, 17 were selected for currently is used to monitor or screen with 60,000 photos — and to Fellowship. Created in 1935, the for prostate cancer. Sarcosine was manually tag them with a variety of Institute of Mathematical Statistics is

Newsletter 5 keywords that describe their she does not believe the approach online photo-sharing Web sites such contents. For example, we might ever will be 100-percent accurate. as photo.net. select 100 photos of national parks “There are so many images out there “In its current form, we’ve seen and tag them with the following and so many variations on the more than 80 percent consistency keywords: national park, landscape, images’ contents that I don’t think it between the human and computer and tree,” said Jia Li, an associate will be possible for ALIPR to be ratings,” Wang said. “The professor of statistics at Penn State 100-percent accurate,” she said. improvements to the system that are and one of the creators of ALIPR. “ALIPR works by recognizing currently under development show “We then would build a statistical patterns in color and texture. For promise to get even higher model to teach the computer to example, if a cat in a photo is performance.” recognize patterns in color and wearing a red coat, the red coat may “Furthermore, aesthetics texture among these 100 photos and lead ALIPR to tag the photo with represents just one dimension of to assign our keywords to new words that are irrelevant to the cat. human emotion. photos that seem to contain national There is just too much variability out Future systems will perhaps strive parks, landscapes, and/or trees. there.” Li currently is pursuing some to capture other emotions that Eventually, we hope to reverse the new ideas that may help her to pictures arouse in people,” he said. process so that a person can use the achieve better recognition of image According to Wang, there also are keywords to search the Web for semantics. opportunities to link the rating relevant images.” This research is being supported system directly to cameras so that Li said that most current image- by the National Science Foundation. when a photo is taken, the retrieval systems search for photographer can instantly see how it keywords in the text associated with In another project, the re- might be perceived by the public. the photo or in the name that was searchers developed an online photo- Wang and Li worked with given to the photo. This technique, rating system that is the first publicly Ritendra Datta, a recent Penn State however, often misses appropriate available tool for auto-matically doctoral degee recipient, on this photos and retrieves inappropriate determining the aesthetic value of an project. Funding was provided by the photos. Li’s new technique allows image. According to Wang, the tool, National Science Foundation as part her to train computers to recognize called Aesthetic Quality Inference of ongoing research about the the semantics of images based on Engine (ACQUINE), judges the relationship between computers and pixel information alone. aesthetic quality of digital images visual concepts. Li, who developed ALIPR with and is a significant first step in her colleague James Wang, a Penn recognizing human emotional State associate professor of reaction to visual stimulus. Harkness Named information sciences and technology, ACQUINE, which has been in Emeritus-Faculty said that their approach appropriately development since 2005 and was Teaching Scholar assigns to photos at least one launched in April 2009, can be found keyword among seven possible online at http://acquine.alipr.com. Professor William Harkness has keywords about 90 percent of the Users can upload their own images been named as a Provost's Emeritus- time. But, she added, the accuracy for rating or test the system by Faculty Teaching Scholar for Fall rate really depends on the evaluator. providing a link to any image online. 2009 This award includes funds for “It depends on how specific the The system provides an aesthetic his teaching initiatives. This is the evaluator expects the approach to rating within seconds. fifth year that Professor Harkness has be,” she said. “For example, ALIPR Wang said the system extracts and received this award. often distinguishes people from uses visual aspects such as color animals, but rarely distinguishes saturation, color distribution and Chiaromonte On children from adults.” The team is photo composition to give any uploaded image a rating from zero to PSU Team Shedding working to improve ALIPR’s Light On How accuracy by constantly teaching it 100. The system learns to associate these aspects with the way humans Disease-Causing DNA new keywords. Mutations Occur Although the team’s goal is to rate photos based on thousands of ECoS Science Journal, Fall 2009 improve ALIPR’s accuracy, Li said previously-rated photographs in A team of Penn State scientists has

Newsletter 6 shed light on the processes that lead place during DNA replication, but can provide better advice to couples to certain human DNA mutations the team found that the mutations who want to have children. “For that are implicated in hundreds of also can form by mechanisms related example, there is a difference among inherited diseases such as tuberous to recombination. “What’s striking is males and females in the number of sclerosis and neurofibromatosis type that most insertions and deletions are replication rounds that their germline 1. The results one day could thought to occur by replication errors cells undergo. Males undergo more influence the way couples who seek and, while this is a primary source rounds of DNA replication than to have children receive genetic generating the mutations, we females and the number of replica- counseling. The team, led by discovered that recombination also is tion rounds increases with a male’s Kateryna Makova, an associate very important,” said Kvikstad. age. If we know that a disease is due professor of biology, also includes For one of the first times in a to a replication error rather than a Erika Kvikstad, a graduate student in genome-wide study, the team used a recombination error, doctors can the Department of Biology, and statistical method, called wavelet provide better genetic counseling to Francesca Chiaromonte, an analysis, which allows scientists to couples,” said Makova. associate professor of statistics. Their look at variability in a sample at This research received support findings were published in the multiple scales simultaneously. For from the National Institutes of Health journal Genome Research. example, JPEG image files, which and Penn State University. The scientists examined insertions preserve an image’s different and deletions — mutations in which qualities regardless of whether the small fragments of DNA are either image is made smaller or larger, use Road Named after added or subtracted from the genome a similar wavelet-like method. Professor C.R. Rao — and they found patterns in the According to Chiaromonte, “When The Hindu (India’s Ntl Newspaper Online Ed) DNA sequences immediately you run a wavelet analysis you are September 10, 2009 surrounding the mutations. “The characterizing the signals The GHMC has accorded permission patterns in the DNA sequences that simultaneously at many scales. In our to name the road from IIIT surround insertions and deletions case, the signal was the composition crossroads to Alind Factory, suggest mechanisms that may have of the DNA sequences surrounding Lingampally as ‘Prof. C.R. Rao generated the insertions and insertions and deletions. To be able Road’ in recognition of services deletions,” said Chiaromonte. to look at these sequences with a rendered by the legendary figure of According to the researchers, the multi-scale approach was really Indian science and renowned study is the first to detect patterns in important for our ability to find statistician, Padma Vibhushan Prof. the DNA sequences adjacent to interesting features.” C.R. Rao, a press release stated. insertions and deletions of DNA Using the wavelet analysis, the fragments at the genome-wide scale. team confirmed that scale is The team also found striking important in detecting patterns of Jia Li Invited to differences between insertions and DNA sequences adjacent to Stanford for deletions. For example, they found insertions and deletions. For Distinguished Alumni that recognition sites for the enzyme example, they were able to detect an Scholars Day topoisomerase, which is responsible increased number of DNA sequences for winding and unwinding DNA, responsible for pausing DNA Jia Li was a member of the out- were more prevalent near deletions polymerase, an enzyme involved in standing group of alumni invited to than near insertions. “We were DNA replication, at the finest scales Stanford University during May surprised to find that the patterns of (10 to 20 DNA base pairs), but not at 2009 for Distinguished Alumni DNA sequences surrounding larger scales. Scholars Day! This was the third insertions versus deletions are unique Both replication and recombin- year for the event which brought because scientists previously have ation errors can lead to disease- approximately 20 distinguished lumped the two types of mutations causing mutations in humans. academics (who received one or together,” said Kvikstad. According to the researchers, if we more degrees from Stanford) across Scientists also previously had know that certain diseases are more disciplines and ethnic groups back to believed that insertions and deletions likely to be caused by recombination Stanford to meet with and inspire are formed mostly by errors taking than by replication errors, doctors (continued on page 11)

Newsletter 7 Patricia Buchanan Promoted to Senior Instructor. Patricia ‘Pat’ Buchanan was promoted to Senior Instructor as of July 1, 2009.

Sabbatical & Travels

Bing Li will be on sabbatical leave during Spring 2010. The next issue of Stat News will include a brief write-up on his activities during that period.

Arkady Tempelman travelled to Europe June 25 till August 3, 2009. The first place Dr. Tempelman visited was Vilnius, Lithuania, where he delivered lectures in the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics of the Lithuanian Academy of Science. He also discussed problems related to their common interest with Professor D. Surgailis and other Lithuanian probabilists. The main goal of Dr. Tempelman’s trip was participation as an invited speaker in the Dobrushin International Conference organized by the Institute of Information Transfer Problems of the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow. This Conference was dedicated to the memory of the outstanding mathematician Roland Dobrushin on occasion of his 80th birthday. Dobrushin was Arkady’s Ph.D. thesis advisor during his graduate study at Moscow and since then, his great friend. Dr. Tempelman’s joint talk with Professor B. Gurevich, Moscow State University, was devoted to Some Applications of Thermodynamical Formalism to Problems Related to Ergodic Theory and Statistics. This topic fit the topics of the Conference: Dobrushin was the founder of Thermodynamical Formalism, the first rigorous approach to Statistical Mechanics. Overall, the Conference covered all fields which were influenced by Dobrushin’s incredible intuition and rigorous mathematical approach to various problems related to Probability Theory, Mathematical Linguistics, Queuing Theory, Statistical Physics, etc.

Selected Faculty Activities

2009 Rao Prize Conference University Park, May 2009

The Department of Statistics hosted the 2009 Rao Prize Conference on Friday, 22 May 2009. The Conference was held in 100 Life Sciences Building (Berg Auditorium) on the Penn State University Park campus. The focus of the one-day conference was on statistics and probability. The conference program consisted of four invited speakers and a poster presentation by graduate students. The program opened at 8:45AM with welcoming addresses by Bruce Lindsay and C. R. Rao. The invited speakers were C.F. Jeff Wu, Coca-Cola Chair in Engineering Statistics and professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, with a lecture entitled, Minimum-Energy Designs: From Nanostructure Synthesis to Sequential Optimization; Debashis Ghosh, associate professor of statistics at Penn State with a lecture entitled, Kernel Machine Methods in Computational Biology ; Jianqing Fan, professor of statistics at Princeton University with lecture entitled Penalized Likelihood with NP-Dimensionality ; and Peter Bickel, professor of statistics at the University of California at Berkeley with a lecture on Dealing With Large Observation Dimension p in Relation to Data Size n of the Same or Smaller. The highlight of the conference was the award of the 2009 Rao Prize to Peter Bickel. Bickel is a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation, a winner of a prize from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded an honorary doctoral degree by Hebrew University in Israel in 1986. He is the past president of the Bernoulli Society and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Dean Daniel Larson presented the prize to Dr. Bickel. The poster session was also a success with many interesting posters presented leaving no doubt concerning the enthusiasm of

Newsletter 8 the graduate students of the department. Following is a listing of the students and titles of their poster presentations: Andreas Artemiou: An Inequality for Principal Components and Regression K. Sham Bhat: Inferring Likelihoods and Climate System Characteristics from Climte Models and Multiple Tracers Zhe Chen: A Hierarchical Bayesian Dynamic Model: The Case of Customer Satisfaction and Shareholder Value Association Yeojin Chung: A Multivariate Likelihood-Tuned Density Estimator and Modal Inference Ruth Hummel: Using a Stepping Algorithm to Fit an Exponential Family Random Graph Model for a Biological Network Bo Kai: Local Rank Inference for Varying Coefficient Models Kion Kim: Recent History Functional Linear Model for Longitudinal Data Min Hee Kim: Order Thresholding Min Kyung Kim: On Dimension-Folding of Matrix- or Array-Valued Statistical Objects Esra Kurum: Estimation in Covariate-Adjusted Nonlinear Regression Models Hyang Min Lee: Variable Selection for Clustering Juyoun Lee: Sampling Tables Given a Set of Conditionals Megan Romer: The Statistical Analysis of Monotone Incomplete Multivariate Normal Data Jianping Sun: Composite Likelihood: Issues in Efficiency Huei-Wen Teng: Bayesian Quadrature: State-Price Density Estimation Mina Yoo: Assessment of Measurement Agreement for Functional Longitudinal Data Lu Zhang: Regime Switching Stochastic Volatility and Correlation

The C.R. and Bhargavi Rao Prize was established to honor and recognize outstanding and influential innovations in the theory and practice of mathematical statistics, international leadership in directing statistics research, and pioneering contributions by a recognized leader in the field of statistics. More information about the conference is on the Web at http://www.stat.psu.edu/~richards/raoprize/2009.html.

2008 Clifford C. Clogg Memorial

The Clifford C. Clogg Memorial Lecture in Sociology and Statistics honors the late Clifford C. Clogg, a distinguished professor of sociology and professor of statistics at Penn State from 1979 to 1995. The lecture series was created in 1996, when funds contributed by colleagues and friends were used to establish an endowment for its support. The keynote speaker for the Memorial Lecture was Stephen E. Fienberg. His lecture was entitled, Reflections on Latent-Class Modeling. Dr. Fienberg is currently the Maurice Falk University Professor of Statistics and Social Science at Carnegie Mellon University, with appointments in the Department of Statistics, the Machine Learning Department, and Cylab. He has Stephen E. Fienberg served as Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon and as Vice President for Academic Affairs at York University, as well as on the faculties of the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota. Alexandra Slavkovic, Assistant Professor of Statistics, introduced the keynote speaker. Alexandra Slavkovic. A reception followed the lecture in Thomas Building in the Clifford Clogg Memorial Library housed in the Department of Statistics. Mrs. Judy Clogg attended the lecture and reception. Mrs. Judy Clogg

(Photos courtesy of Wei-Han Chen, current Ph.D. student)

Newsletter 9 Fifth Annual Penn State Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers

The Fifth Annual Penn State Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers was held at Penn State June 1-6, 2009. The 6-day course in fundamental statistical inference was designed to provide physical scientists, and graduate students, with a strong conceptual foundation in modern statistics and to develop a repertoire of well-established techniques applicable to observational astronomy and physics. Classroom instruction was interspersed with hands-on analysis of astronomical data using the public-domain R software package. The course was taught by a team of statistics and astronomy professors with opportunity for discussion of methodological issues. Jogesh Babu, Professor of Statistics, The statistical techniques covered included: exploratory data analysis; Organizer of Summer School hypothesis testing and parameter estimation; regression and confidence interval estimation; model selection and goodness-of-fit; maximum likelihood methods and Bayes' Theorem; non-parametric methods; Monte Carlo methods; Poisson processes; and time series. Out of the 46 participants 13 were from institutions in Canada, Denmark, France, Mexico, Qatar, Spain and United Kingdom The 2009 Summer School was modeled on the last four Penn State Summer Schools and two Indian Institute of Astrophysics- Penn State Summer Schools held earlier.

News from the Center for Statistical Ecology and Environmental Statistics G. P. Patil, Distinguished Professor of Mathematical Statistics Emeritus and Director of the Center G.P. Patil was invited to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Experts Consultation Panel on Composite Indices for Environment, scheduled at the UNEP Headquarters, Nairobi, Kenya. He was appointed Chair of the Panel that was earlier chaired by Nobel Laureate Mario Molina, Member of the Science Advisory Council of the United States President. Professor Patil was invited to deliver a keynote inaugural lecture at the International Health GIS Conference held in Hyderabad, India. At that time, he was also invited to visit the International Crops Research Institute for Arid Lands (ICRISAT) in Hyderabad, India and the Graduate School of Natural Resource Management of TERI University, New Delhi, India, a component of TERI whose director Pachauri shared Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Al Gore. Patil was invited to address the audience at the performance of the JalaSRI dance drama ballet of the District Level Watershed Surveillance and Research Institute, India held at the famous national habitat center auditorium in India. The ballet is a stage performance depiction of digital governance and hotspot geoinformatics. Professor Patil was invited by the President of India to visit Rashtrapati Bhavan, the Presidential Quarters. Patil, along with a select international group of the NSF Project, was invited by the State University of New York Center for Technology in Government for an exclusive workshop devoted to reflection on the NSF Digital Government Research Program on Building a Sustainable International Digital Government Research Community. Patil directed a research, training, and outreach workshop at TERI University to help initiate digital governance and hotspot geoinformatics resource convergence consortium for district level watershed surveillance, research, and outreach. Patil has been invited to serve on the international organizing committee of the International Conference for the Interface of Statistics with Sciences in honor of C.R. Rao and his 90-th Birthday Celebration. G. P. Patil, Director, Center for Statistical Ecology and Patil was organizer and chair of a special invited session at the 2009 Joint Statistical Meetings Environmental Statistics held in Washington, D.C. The session theme was: Digital Governance, Hotspot GeoInformatics, Knowledge Discovery, and Public Policy.

Student Interns and Research Students: The graduate level research interns in digital governance and hotspot geoinformatics have been: Tushar Chaudhari, Yogita Jadhav, Rajesh Koli, and Sanjay Pawde from JalaSRI, Watershed Surveillance and Research Institute of M.J. College at the North Maharashtra University, Jalgaon, India.

Newsletter 10 2008 Krishnaiah and Khatri Lectures One day Workshop on Frontiers of Evolutionary Biology October 10, 2008

The theme of the workshop, hosted by the Department of Statistics and the Center for Multivariate Analysis, was Frontiers of Evolutional Biology. The workshop opened with a welcoming address by Daniel J. Larson, Dean, Eberly College of Science at Penn State. The Krishnaiah and Khatri lecturers were invited by Professor C. R. Rao. Elizabeth Thompson of the University of Washington was the Krishnaiah Lecturer and her lecture was entitled, Inference of genome sharing among related individuals: Integrating modern SNP data on pedigrees and populations.’ The Khatri lecturer was Alan Walker of Penn State and he presented a lecture on ‘Humans in an evolutionary context.’ Other speakers from Penn State giving talks on different aspects of evolution were Kateryna Makova, ‘Studying mutations in the age of statistical genomics,’ Yu Zhang, ‘Reconstructing evolution history for complex gene clusters in multiple primates,’ and Beth Shapiro, ‘Inferring the demographic history of measurably evolving populations using ancient DNA.’ Adam Siepel from Cornell University presented a talk on ‘Phylogenomics of mammals: Novel genes and positive selection.’

(L to R) Masatoshi Nei, Evan Pugh Professor of Biology, Penn State, Elizabeth Thompson, Professor of Statistics, University of Washington, Alan Walker, Evan Pugh Professor of Biological Anthropology and Biology, Penn State and C. R. Rao,Eberly Professor Emeritus, Penn State.

The poster prepared for the workshop can be viewed at: http://www.stat.psu.edu/news/conferences/Krishnaiah_Khatri_poster_08.pdf

(Photo courtesy of Hsiao-Pin (Anderson) Liu , current Ph.D. student)

(continued from page 7) current Stanford graduate and undergraduate students from cultural groups underrepresented in faculty positions in our nation's colleges and universities (including women in science, math and engineering disciplines) to consider academia as a career. The theme of the event was "envisioning the future." The event began with a small informal dinner, continued the following day with small group workshops for graduate and undergraduate students, and concluded with a gala dinner hosted by Provost John Etchemendy at the Faculty Club, celebrating the career accomplishments of invited alumni.

Newsletter 11

Research Grants

Active as of September 2009

National Science Foundation

Michael Akritas *Fully Nonparametric Models for Random Effects, Order Thresholding, Bootstrap Testing, and Applications Gutti Jogesh Babu *MSPA-AST: Advancing Statistical Methodology in Massive Astronomical Surveys **2009 Summer School in Statistical Inference for Astronomers John Fricks *Diffusion and Kinetics in Processive Molecular Motors Bing Li *Collaborative Research: Model-Based and Model-Free Dimension Reduction with Applications to Bioinformatics **Collaborative Research: A Paradigm for Dimensional Reduction with Respect to a General Functional Jia Li *New Geometric Methods of Mixture Models for Interactive Visualization Bruce Lindsay *High Dimensional Mixture Models **NSF Distances ***Collaborative Research: Statistical Methods and Algorithms for Genomic Data G. P. Patil *Project Geoinformatic Surveillance: Hotspot Detection and Prioritization Across Geographic Regions and Networks for Digital Government in the 21st Century Donald Richards *Multivariate Statistical Analysis and Image Classification with Applications Runzi Li *CAREER: Model Selection for Semiparametric Regression Models in High Dimensional Aleksandra Slavkovic *Statistical Disclosure Limitation Methods for Tabular Data

National Institutes of Health

Debashis Ghosh *Statistical Methods for Cancer Biomarkers **Statistical Methods for the Analysis of Functional Genomic Data David Hunter *Novel Statistical Models for Synthesizing Social Networks and Epidemic Dynamics Runze Li *New Statistical Models for Intensive Longitudinal Data **Semi-varying Coefficient Models for Intensive Longitudinal Data Joseph Schafer *Marginal Causal Models for Observational Studies in Obesity Research **Improved Methods for Missing Data, Causal Inference and Latent-Transition Analysis in Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment. Yu Zhang *Bayesian Methods for Epistasis Association Mapping

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Other Funding Sources

Murali Haran (USGS/USDI prime)*Developing Regionally Downscaled Probabilistic Climate Change Projections James Rosenberger (U.S. Bureau of the Census)*Dissertation Fellowship Program Durland Shumway (Department of the Army)*Assessing Human Annoyance Due to Military Impulse Noise

Visitors

Robin Antoine, Math and Computer Science Department, University of the West Indies at St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago visited with Dr. Jim Rosenberger during July 2009.

Ayanendranath Basu, Ph.D. Penn State, Professor, Bayesian and Interdisciplinary Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India, visited the Department from August 2008 until May 2009. He taught during Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 semesters and was also collaborating on a research project with Professor Bruce Lindsay.

Christopher Marley, a current graduate student at the University of Southampton, UK, was in the Department visiting with Dr. Dennis Lin as a research collaborator from mid-August through mid-October 2009.

Elizabeth Martinez Gomez is visiting Dr. Jogesh Babu and the Center for Astrostatistics from May 2009 through May 2010 while continuing with her postdoctoral training. During her time in the Department she wants to learn and apply new statistical tools for her current research in Astronomy and Space Physics.

Michael Schweinberger received his Ph.D. from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, in 2007. He began working as a research associate with Dr. David Hunter in August 2009. Before coming to Penn State, Michael was a visiting research scholar at the Department of Statistics and Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle.

David Welch joined the statistics department in late 2007 as a postdoctoral researcher. He continues in the Department as a research associate working with Dr. David Hunter. He hails from New Zealand, where he completed his PhD in 2006 at the University of Aukland. Before coming to Penn State, he worked in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Imperial College, London.

Zhou Yu a PhD student from East China Normal University was spending two years (October 2007 through October 2009) at Penn State to conduct research on dimension reduction under the supervision of Professor Bing Li.

Zhenyue Zhang from the Department of Mathematics at Zhejiang University, P.R. China was visiting Dr. Runze Li and participating in research in the Department during July and August 2009.

Lixing Zhu from Hong Kong Baptist University visited with Dr. Bing Li during July 2009.

Visitors to the Center for Statistical Ecology and Environmental Statistics Sharad Joshi, Professor of Computer Science, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania and himself a former Ph.D. from the Department, has been visiting to conduct research on methodology and lead the software development for hotspot detection and prioritization. (Continued on page 22)

Newsletter 13 ALUMNI NEWS

Alumni Events

The 2009 Alumni Workshop took place on February 26 and 27, 2009. 2009 Alumni Workshop The entire event was held in Thomas Building. Lectures were held in the Department’s conference room and food and social events were held in the Department’s lounge and library.

The first day started with a continental breakfast, followed by a Welcome Address by the Department Head, Dr. Bruce Lindsay. Following the Welcome Address, Dr. Trent Gaugler, Research Associate and Assistant Professor of Statistics, presented a lecture entitled, Fully Nonparametric Mixed Effects Models: Testing for the Fixed Main Effect. ENAR Fest (Session 1) followed Dr. Gaugler’s presentation and was

composed of graduate students giving talks that they would be presenting

at the Eastern North American Region (ENAR) Meetings. Session 1 was chaired by Professor Emeritus William L. Harkness. ENAR Fest (Session (L to R) Yuexiao Dong, Yeojing Chung, 2) followed in the afternoon. Session 2 was chaired by Dr. Debashis W. L. Harkness, Bo Kai, Yijia Feng, Sasiprapa Hiriote Ghosh, Associate Professor of Statistics. The following talks composed ENAR Fest Sessions 1 and 2: Yeojing Chung (advisors: Bruce Lindsay and Jia Li): A Multivariate

Likelihood-Tuned Density Estimator

Yuexiao Dong (advisor: Bing Li): Dimension Reduction for Non- Elliptically Distributed Predictors Yijia Feng (advisor: Runze Li): Stopping Boundaries of Flexible Sample Size Design with Flexible Trial Monitoring – A Unified Approach Sasiprapa Hiriote (advisor: Vernon Chinchilli): Multivariate Concordance Correlation Coefficient Bo Kai (advisors: Runze Li and David Hunter): Local Rank Inference

Jim Rosenberger introducing keynote speaker, for Varying Coefficient Models Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar Juyoun Lee (advisor: Aleksandra Slavkovic): Sampling Tables Given a Set of Conditionals Jianping Sun (advisor: Bruce Lindsay): Composite Likelihood: Issues in Efficiency Huei-wen Teng (advisor: John Liechty): State Price Density Estimation from a Bayesian Perspective Lu Zhang (advisor: John Liechty): A Non-Parametric Approach to

Pair-Wise Dynamic Topic Correlation Detection

Following the ENAR session presentations was a talk by Anthony Byran Smucker (for Student Advisory Homer and Kerry Go of Sanofi Pasteur on How Significant is the Committee) presenting 2009 Student Alumnus Statistician's Role on the Research Process in the Award to Bonnie Pharmaceutical/Vaccines Industry? The keynote address by Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar entitled Statistics in Public Policy was the concluding presentation. Bonnie received her

Ph.D. in Statistics from Penn State in 1999. Bonnie was also presented with the 2009 Student Alumnus of the Year Award by the Student

Photos courtesy of Yiyun (Michael) Zhang ( Ph.D. 2009; Advisory Committee (SAC). A dinner reception followed. Job interviews advisor, R. Li) were held on February 27, 2009.

Newsletter 14 Annual Dinner with Statistics Department Alumni Joint Statistical Meetings Washington, DC (August 2009) Andreas Artemiou, Current Ph.D. Graduate Student

Department Dinner at JSM, Tuesday August 4th, 2009 For many years the department has organized a dinner for faculty, students and alumni attending JSM. It is an opportunity for them to get together in a relaxed atmosphere. This is an event that strengthens the relationship between faculty and current students and at the same time gives the opportunity for alumni of the department to share their experiences with current students in the department and also see the Professors that taught them during their stay in the Department of Statistics at Penn State. This year, the JSM venue was Washington DC and the departmental dinner was at Regional Food and Drink Washington DC (RFD) which is not only a restaurant but a brewery as well. Having this in mind and the fact that RFD had a happy hour every day from 5:00 to 7:00PM, the department head, Professor Lindsay, suggested that for the first time since the event started we not only have dinner but also a Happy Hour before dinner. So, while dinner was set at 6:30PM everyone was invited to the restaurant at 5:30PM for Happy Hour. The event was successful! There was a record number of attendees, more than 40 people (including two infants), far more than the 25 we were initially expecting. The atmosphere of the restaurant was perfect for the occasion. Faculty used the opportunity to see their students, and students and alumni had a chance to see new and old friends as well as current friends they have made during their stay in the department. According to ASA and IMS, next year JSM will be at Vancouver, BC, Canada. All you alumni, faculty and students who enjoy participating, check the restaurants and make your suggestions on where you would like to have the event next year. Hope to see even more people at the dinner next year!! After all, conferences are not solely for working, but also for relaxing and having fun with old and new friends.

Alumni News

Mark Becker (Ph.D. 1985; advisor, Clifford C. Clogg) was appointed President of Georgia State University in January 2009. He became the 7th president in Georgia State’s history. From 2004 until becoming President of Georgia State University, Becker served as executive vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of South Carolina. Prior to his appointment at the University of South Carolina, Becker spent three years at the University of Minnesota as a biostatistics professor, dean of the School of Public Health and assistant vice president of Public Health, Preparedness and Emergency Response. From 1989 to 2000, Becker was a professor and associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. He also has held academic posts at the University Mark Becker of Washington, the University of Florida and Cornell University. Internationally recognized as a researcher in biostatistics and public health sciences, Becker has published more than 40 articles and has been principal investigator on research grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Becker is married to Laura Voisinet (M.A., 1985; advisor, J. K. Ord) and has two children. (Excerpts from article by Liz Babiarz, Public Relations Specialist, Georgia State University)

October 2009: Mark Becker Receives an Outstanding Science Alumni Award. The Eberly College of Science Outstanding Alumni Awards are presented annually to recognize and reward outstanding Penn State alumni for their success as leaders in science and for the impact they have had and will continue to have on society and their professions. Mark was one of six alumni receiving the award during 2009. The awards were presented on Friday evening at a reception and dinner at the Penn Stater Conference Center. On Saturday, Jim Rosenberger hosted an informal reception for Mark and Laura at the Bergenblick Strawbale Lodge in Linden Hall. Mark had the following to say in a letter he later sent to Jim Rosenberger: ‘I am deeply honored to be considered an outstanding alumnus of Penn State. It Mark and Laura Becker

Newsletter 15 is an amazing university with a great number of alumni who have gone on to have make positive and lasting contributions around the world. It is humbling to be considered to be among those who deserve singling out. Nearly thirty years ago I was extremely fortunate to enroll in a department full of life and energy. You’ll remember well the department in those days. You, Bruce, Steve, and Cliff all were early in your careers, and running as fast and furiously as possible. And Tom H was going full speed as a world recognized leader in his field. It was a great time to be a student. The transition from graduate student to faculty member was effortless (and financially rewarding), the department prepared me well for the next steps. I hope and trust that the department is continuing to provide students with the kind of outstanding preparation that I experienced.’

John Grego (Ph.D. 1989; advisors, B. G. Lindsay and Clifford Clogg) was part of a study on global warming organized by the Associated Press. The AP article, ‘AP Impact: Statisticians Reject Global Cooling’ can be found at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_bi_ge/us_sci_global_cooling .

Debasis Kundu, (Ph.D., 1989; advisor, C. R. Rao) became an Endowed Chair Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India in November 2008.

Ayanendranath Basu (Ph.D., 1991; advisor, Bruce G. Lindsay) has been elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in India in November 2008. India has three different scientific societies that are disjoint in their activities without any hierarchy between them. The National Academy of Sciences is one of them. Fellowship in any of these societies is generally considered a major honor. Dr. Basu is currently a Professor in the Bayesian and Interdisciplinary Research Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, India.

Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar (Ph.D., 1999; advisor, J. L. Schafer) works off-site from Nashville, TN as a Statistician with the RAND Corporation. She was recently appointed Visiting Scholar at the Peabody College of Education, Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Her office is at the National Center on Performance Incentives at Peabody, which is conducting the first large-scale randomized experiment of teacher incentives in the metro Nashville school district. Bonnie is presently working on two papers on the national landscape of Pay for Performance as documented by the Schools and Staffing Survey, and an evaluation of Supplemental Education Services (SES tutoring) in metro Nashville. SES are offered to failing Title I schools, under the No Child Left Behind law. Bonnie became an Associate Editor for JASA Book Reviews in 2008, and will be Chair of the Health Policy Statistics Section of ASA in 2009. Bonnie is married to Bill and has two children, Maya and Austin. She would welcome hearing from any Penn Staters at [email protected]

Lewis H. Shoemaker (Ph.D., 1980; advisor: T. P. Hettmansperger) became a full professor in 1993. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, Millersville, PA. Please send us information that we can publish in future newsletters. For example, include your current job and any information that you feel would be of interest to other alumni or those associated with the Department of Statistics. When sending the information, please indicate your permission to have the information printed in Stat News. Please send to Barbara Freed [email protected]. STUDENT NEWS Awards

Congratulation to ~

Colt Viehdorfer who received the Outstanding MAS Student Award for the Class of 2009 in recognition of his outstanding academic performance and his contribution to departmental activities. Colt received his M.A.S. degree in summer 2009.

Newsletter 16

Bo Kai (Ph.D., 2009; advisor, Runze Li) on being awarded a Student Paper Award for ‘New Robust Statistical Procedures for Semiparametric Regression Models’ in the competition organized by the ASA Nonparametric Statistics Section at JSM 2009.

Concurrent Degree, MAS Students, Kat Sinclair and Kelly Rulison who have been awarded the Harold F. Martin Graduate Assistant Outstanding Teaching Award. This award is given by the Graduate School to the very best graduate student teachers on campus.

Yiyun (Michael) Zhang (Ph.D., 2009; advisor, Runze Li) received a student paper travel award for the 2009 ENAR meeting. He was one of 20 selected out of over 70 applications.

2009 Graduate Teaching Award This year two Ph.D. graduate students were each a recipient of The William L. Harkness Graduate Teaching Award.

Christophe Groendyke received the award in recognition of his outstanding teaching, in particular, of his maintaining a positive atmosphere for teaching and preparation for class.

Scott A Roths received the award in recognition of his outstanding teaching, in particular, of his excellent presentation, preparation for class and improving critical thinking skills. The awards were presented during orientation week. Jim Rosenberger, Acting Department Head (right) presenting awards to Chris Groendyke (center) and Scott Roths (left)

2008 GlaxoSmithKline Scholar Award

Wei-Han Chen, a doctoral graduate student in statistics, was the recipient of the 2008 GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Scholar Award. Wei-Han Chen has a BS and MS in statistics from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. His work there seems very relevant to the pharmaceutical industry. His MS thesis was on the evaluation of average bioequivalence, a topic very relevant to the development of generic drugs. He also worked on clinical trials evaluation, and did biostatistical consulting at the university hospital. His current research interests include biostatistics, bioequivalence and survival analysis. The GSK Award is a $1,000 scholarship grant given by the Biomedical Data Sciences (BDS) Department at GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals primarily to assist statistics departments in their recruitment of outstanding graduate students. The GSK scholarship grant is a one-time award to students chosen by academic department faculty of the Statistical Sciences Group of BDS. Penn State's Department of Statistics is one of ten statistics departments in the United States receiving such an award annually. The GSK Scholar Award has been given to PSU statistics graduate students since 2002. Past Penn State recipients of the GSK Scholar Award are: Benjamin Haas (L to R) Borislav Froloshki, GSK award (2002), Trent Gaugler (2003), Christian Stopp (2004), Hsiao-Pin (Anderson) Liu (2005), liaison, Wei-Han Chen and Naomi Altman Gia Barboza (2006), and Jeffery Yong Ming Woo (2007).

(GSK Scholar Award information provided by Prof Naomi Altman, Chair, Graduate Admissions Committee)

Newsletter 17

Recent Ph.D.’s with Current Affiliations

Fall 2008 Tatiana Benaglia, Ph.D., is a Career Development Fellow in the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom (Advisor: Tom Hettmansperger)

Trent Gaugler, Ph.D., is a Research Associate/Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics and the Statistical Consulting Center at Penn State (Advisor: Michael Akritas)

Svitilana Tyekucheva, Ph.D., is a Postdoc at Sidney Kimmel Company Cancer Center (Advisor: Francesca Chiaromonte)

Spring 2009 Yuexiao Dong, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at Temple University (Advisor: Bing Li)

Virginia Recta, Ph.D., works as a Mathematical Statistician with the Food and Drug Administration in Derwood, MD (Advisor: Jim Rosenberger)

Yiyun Zhang, Ph.D., Senior biostatistician with Novartis AG in Florham Park, NJ (Advisor: Runze Li)

Summer 2009 Sasiprapa Hiriote, Ph.D., is a Lecturer of Statistics at Silpakorn University in Thailand (Advisor: Vernon Chinchilli)

Mian Huang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor Shanghia University (Advisor: Runze Li)

Bo Kai, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at College of Charleston (Advisor: Runze Li)

Shu-Min Liao, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Amherst College, MA (Advisor: Michael Akritas)

Megan Romer, Ph.D., is currently working on research projects with Donald Richards and she is also an Instructor with the World Campus at Penn State (Advisor: Donald Richards)

Yuejiao (Heather) Jiang, Ph.D., is currently employed as a Senior Quantitative Analyst with the Hartford Insurance Group (Advisor: Runze Li)

Recent Masters’ Degrees

Fall 2008 MAS: Eric Shou MS: Lu Zhang

Spring 2009 MAS: Yan Zhang, Yijing Zheng MS: John Hughes, Esra Kurum, Huei-wen Teng

Newsletter 18

Summer 2009 MAS: Michael Coccia, Fujia Hou, Chun Li, Patrick McCardle, Colt Viehdorfer, Luting Xue MS: Matthew Tibbits

Recent Bachelors’ Degrees

Fall 2008 Michael Gallagher, Michael Harrison, Patti Houy, Nathan Joline, Eric Shou, Derrick Vaclavik, Keith Wechter

Spring 2009 Dianne Aubuchon, Melinda Chmielewski, Brett Lissenden, Ross Momyer, Nathan Schubert, Lori Shero, and Robert Weyant

Summer 2009 Kathryn Fitzgerald

Graduate Student Orientation

Orientation week August 17—21, 2009

This year’s Orientation activities initially were to include a departmental picnic that was planned to be held at Sunset Park. The weather was, however, not accommodating so the picnic turned into a luncheon and was held in Thomas Building. Still, everyone shared in a good time in a relaxed atmosphere providing opportunity for new students to mingle with students, faculty.

Jim Rosenberger keeps the suspense building…who will receive the W. L. Harkness teaching award…?? See Award section above.

Students, faculty and staff comingling….

Newsletter 19 U.S. Census Bureau’s Dissertation Fellowship

Byran Smucker (Current Ph.D. Graduate Student) This year, instead of a department assistantship, I am being funded by the U.S. Census Bureau's Dissertation Fellowship program. It is somewhat surprising that I was chosen for this award, since my dissertation research is in experimental design, an area not traditionally associated with the Census Bureau. It is obvious that the committee (and in particular Tommy Wright) took a broader view in selecting a student whose work has no direct connection with theirs. One of the program requirements was a sort of get-acquainted visit, which happened near the end of September. I was treated to a crash course in the basics of the bureau, its history, and its structure. Over the course of three and a half days I met with well over a dozen census staff members, hearing mostly about their work but sometimes explaining mine as well. One memorable meeting was with the director of the Census Bureau, Robert Groves. Though he is sufficiently famous so as to render the brief conference nerve-racking, he was gracious and patient as we discussed my work and his job. Beyond that visit, the fellowship is mostly hands-off. I owe them an interim and final report, and perhaps only one more visit to present my work. For more information about this program, visit http://www.census.gov/srd/www/DissertationFellowshipTopics.pdf

PERSONAL CORNER

A healthy baby boy, Xavier Lee Smucker, was born to Amy and Byran Smucker on Tuesday, June 9. Byran says ‘we have been blessed abundantly!’ Byran is a current Ph.D. candidate in Statistics.

Muhammad Atiyat and wife, Zareen, announced the birth of their baby boy on Saturday 6/13 at 5:28am. The baby is named Muhammad, after Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Muhammad is a current Ph.D. candidate in Statistics.

A baby girl was born to proud parents, Ying and Zhibiao Zhao on July 10th, 2009. Her name is Zoe Yufei ZHAO. The Chinese character Yu means rain and water, fei means flower, grass and in general beautiful things. Rain, flower and grass are particularly meaningful here since this is the year of the OX. Zhibiao is Assistant Professor of Statistics. Li and Junjia Zhu announced the birth of their baby boy, Albert Zhijian Zhu, born on August 30, 2009. Albert’s middle name Zhijian means wise and healthy in Chinese. Both my wife Li and the baby are doing well. Junjia received his Ph.D. in Statistics in 2008. Oliver Quinn Palmer-Gaugler was born on October 2, 2009. Oliver’s parents are Trent and Brooke Gaugler. Trent is a Research Associate/Assistant Professor of Statistics.

Robin Hill (R), Information Technology Specialist, began practicing Shotokan Karate in 2002. She is currently a 1b kyu level Brown belt. Robin is pictured here with Sensei James Field, 8th dan and an officer within the International Shotokan Karate Federation

Newsletter 20 DONATIONS TO THE STATISTICS DEPARTMENT July 1, 2008—June 30, 2009

Dr. and Mrs. Steven F. Arnold Eli Lilly and Co. Fdn Millennium Society Contributors Dr. Brenda L. Gaydos Dr. Scott D. Beattie Dr. and Mrs. Thomas P. Hettmansperger Dr. Bruce G. Lindsay and Dr. Laura J. Simon Mr. Robert V. Hogg Dr. Louis M. Wojcinski and Dr. Suzanne R. Dubnicka Mr. Sami M. Huovilainen and Ms. Maria C. Lago-Teijeiro Dr. and Mrs. Scott E. Pammer Corporate Contributors Dr. Peiyong Qu and Mr. Christopher J. Vecoli Eli Lilly and Company Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Glen A. Rosenberger Johnson & Johnson Ms. Helen D. Tai and Mr. John F. McDevitt

When making contributions to the Department, you can designate how you would like your gift used!

During this year, donations helped support the following:  Holiday Party  Meals with Speakers in the Department’s Colloquium Series  Monthly Staff Luncheons with the Department Head (thanks to Bruce Lindsay and Laura Simon)

Also…..  Travel grants to eleven graduate students and student awards to three graduate students (thanks to the William Harkness Enhancement Fund)  Colloquium Coffee and Cookies (thanks to Debashis Ghosh)  Support of students’ attendance at various meetings (thanks to faculty)  Books donated to the Department Library (thanks to Thomas P. Hettmansperger and C. R. Rao)

Newsletter 21 (Continued from page 13: Visitors to the Center for Statistical Ecology and Environmental Statistics)

Rainer Brüggemann, Senior Scientist of Leibnitz Freshwater Research Institute, Berlin, Germany, and longtime distinguished leader in European Union for Partial Order, Ranking and Prioritization, has been visiting the Center to collaborate on methodology, Software, and Monograph Development. Ashvin Gosain, Director of the Computation Center and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India, visited for two weeks during July 2009. He is an acknowledged National and International Leader on SWAT Modeling for Geospatial Water Resources Assessment and Management. Shuhua Mao of the Department of Engineering of Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China, has been visiting the Center for a calendar year to conduct research on methodology and software development for digital governance and hotspot geoinformatics. Luiz Duczmal of the Statistics Department of Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil, visited the Center for a week in the summer to collaborate on research on geospatial hotspot detection. Vice-Chancellor P.P. Bhojvaid and Dean Prateek Sharma of TERI University, New Delhi, India visited the Center with a view to explore possibilities for strengthened collaboration with the Center. They already have an ongoing collaborative program with Yale University School of Forest and Environmental Studies on Climate Change. Harry Cullings, Acting Chief, Department of Statistics, Radiation Effects Research Foundation of the National Academies of the United States and Japan, Hiroshima, Japan, visited the Center for collaborative research on Hiroshima Nagasaki Atomic Bombing Radiation Effects Hotspot Biogeoinformatics and Public Health Policy during July 2009.

COMING ATTRACTIONS Events to appear in the next issue of StatNews

The Chemerda Lecturership Selection Committee (Jia Li, Alberto Bressan, and Don Richards, chair), has announced that Professor Stephen M. Stigler will present the 2009-2010 John M. Chemerda Lectures on Monday and Tuesday, April 26-27, 2010. Professor Stigler, an eminent historian of statistics, is department chair and Distinguished Service Professor of Statistics at the University of Chicago, has authored three books on the history of statistics, has served as president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and of the International Statistical Institute, was awarded in 2005 an honorary doctorate from Carleton College, and is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society. The Chemerda Lectures bring outstanding scientists to Penn State to deliver a series of lectures. John M. Chemerda was Director of Research at Merck Sharpe & Dohme (now known as Merck) and a Penn State alumnus whose generous gift supported the establishment of the lecture series in 1978. The lecturership consists of three talks. The first talk will be suitably broad in nature so as to appeal to the general public, the second and third talks may be somewhat more specialized, with the last being a departmental colloquium lecture.

STATNEWS is published by PENN STATE DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS, 326 Thomas Building, University Park, PA 16802–2111 Editorial Advisor: Dr. Bruce G. Lindsay Editor: Barbara Freed Editorial Assistant: Laurie Roan This publication is available in alternative media on request. The Pennsylvania State University is committed to the policy that all persons shall have equal access to programs, facilities, admission, and employment without regard to personal characteristics not related to ability, performance, or qualifications as determined by University policy or by state or federal authorities. It is the policy of the University to maintain an academic and work environment free of discrimination, including harassment. The Pennsylvania State University prohibits discrimination and harassment against any person because of age, ancestry, color, disability or handicap, national origin, race, religious creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or veteran status. Discrimination or harassment against faculty, staff, or students will not be tolerated at The Pennsylvania State University. Direct all inquiries regarding the nondiscrimination policy to the Affirmative Action Director, The Pennsylvania State University, 328 Boucke Building, University Park, PA 16802-5901; Tel 814-865-4700/V, 814-863- 1150/TTY.

Produced by the Penn State Department of Statistics U.Ed. SCI 10-53.

Newsletter 22