Two Receive $1k for Research

Members of the Wray Jackson Smith Scholarship Awards Committee recently chose Kaitlyn Ruth Dowden and Robert Tumasian as this year’s winners. Dowden is a graduate student at Penn State University. She will use her scholarship to research formally private methods for the quarterly census employment and wages data for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Tumasian, who was a graduate student at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, will use the scholarship to study composite estimands for use in phase III idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis clinical trials.

The scholarships were established in Wray Jackson Smith’s memory. He was a founding member of the ASA Government Statistics Section, and his career in government spanned four decades, including positions in the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, and the Energy Information Administration. After retiring from the federal government in 1983, he continued to play a role in federal statistics in the private sector.

The scholarship is awarded jointly by the ASA’s Social Statistics Section and Government Statistics Section. It is co-sponsored by the Washington Statistical Society, providing up to $1,000 to explore a variety of research opportunities.