Dustin Tran and Nan Xiao Win JSM Student Awards

From left, back row: Jun Yan, Heike Hofmann, Juergen Symanzik, Dustin Tran, and Michael Friendly. From left, front row: Nan Xiao, Liuyi Hu, Arkajyoti Saha, Earo Wang, and Kevin Lin.

The joint Statistical Computing and Statistical Graphics Section gave out two student awards during a well-attended section mixer July 30 at JSM in Vancouver.

Of the 12 entries to the John M. Chambers Statistical Software Award, the following two winners were chosen:

• Dustin Tran of Columbia University for Edward, a Python package for probabilistic modeling, inference, and criticism
• Nan Xiao of Central South University, China, for liftr, an R package for persistent reproducible reporting

John Chambers could not attend JSM to present the award in person, but responded to Jun Yan’s invitation with the following note, which was read at the mixer:

It would be a pleasure to present the awards, but unfortunately, I will not attend this year’s JSM. Please do extend my personal congratulations to the winners. And also, please send my thanks to you and everyone on the awards committee. You are making a contribution to the future of the profession by recognizing and encouraging young achievers.

When I suggested the award to the ASA back in the previous century, I hoped it would help shine some light on future talented students. It’s succeeded beyond what I would have imagined, thanks to the continuing efforts of the awards committees. I’m most grateful.

The student paper competition had 25 submissions. The committee selected the following four winners and one honorable mention:

• Arkajyoti Saha of The Johns Hopkins University for “BRISC: Bootstrap for Rapid Inference on Spatial Covariances”
• Liuyi Hu of North Carolina State University for “MM Algorithms for Variance Component Models”
• Xiaoxiao Sun of the University of Georgia for “An Asympirical Smoothing Parameters Selection Approach for SS-ANOVA Models in Large Samples”
• Earo Wang of Monash University for “Calendar-Based Graphics for Visualizing People’s Daily Schedules”
• Kevin Lin of Carnegie Mellon University for “Dependency Diagnostic: Visually Understanding Pairwise Variable Relations” (honorable mention)

It is now time for the next round of the awards, which have a deadline of December 15. The competitions are good CV builders for students, so spread the word. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer for the student awards or have someone to suggest, contact Jun Yan. Detailed announcements about these awards are available on the section website.