The 2019 ASA Pittsburgh Chapter Banquet was held at the Wyndham University Center on Tuesday, April 16th. The banquet featured a student poster session; a keynote speech delivered by Wendy L. Martinez, PhD of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (and the President-Elect of the American Statistical Association); presentation of student awards; recognition of various Chapter members’ accomplishments in the 2018-2019 academic year; and the 2019 Statistician of the Year award.
Keynote Speaker
Wendy L. Martinez, PhD
Director, Mathematical Statistics
Research Center, Bureau of Labor
Statistics
President-Elect of the American
Statistical Association
Dr. Martinez, graduated in 1989 with a double major in mathematics
and physics at Cameron University. She earned a master's degree
in aerospace engineering at George Washington University and
the NASA Langley Research Center in 1991, and a Ph.D. in
computational sciences and informatics specializing in computational
statistics from George Mason University in 1995. Dr. Martinez was a
program officer at the Office of Naval Research since 1997, and has
held adjunct faculty positions at Strayer University and George Mason University.
Dr. Martinez is the coordinating editor of the journal Statistics
Surveys (jointly sponsored by four major statistical societies). She is
the author of two books on MATLAB-based computational
statistics and exploratory data analysis: Computational Statistics
Handbook with MATLAB (CRC Press, 2002; 2nd ed., 2007; 3rd ed.,
2015), [4] and Exploratory Data Analysis with MATLAB (CRC Press,
2004; 2nd ed., with Jeffrey Solka, 2010).
Dr. Martinez is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical
Association, and elected member of the International Statistical
Institute. She has received many awards including the Founders
Award of the American Statistical Association.
Statistician of the Year
Shyamal D. Peddada, PhD
Professor and Chairman,
Department of Biostatistics,
University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Peddada received his master’s and PhD degrees in Statistics from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at University of
Pittsburgh in 1981 and 1983, respectively. Before coming back to
Pittsburgh as Chair of the Department of Biostatistics in 2017, he was
Professor at the Department of Biostatistics, University of Virginia
from 1989 to 2004 and Senior Investigator of the Biostatistics Branch
of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
from 2000-2017. He previously served as Vice President and
President at the ASA Virginia Chapter from 1996-1998.
Dr. Peddada’s research interests focuses on but not limited to order
restricted statistical inference, geosciences, fibroid growth study, and
microbiome research. He is an elected Fellow of the American
Statistical Association and a recipient of the ASA Outstanding
Statistical Application Award.
As the new Chair of the Department of Biostatistics, Dr. Peddada
undertook several new initiatives for growth, development, and
modernization of the department. Specifically, he is leading the
department in developing new MS concentrations in Statistical and
Computational Genomics and in Health Data Science. Through the
new development, the department not only will grow its biostatistics
programs but also educate the future generations of MS students.
Besides promoting research and education, Dr. Peddada also served
the statistical and scientific communities as an editor for journals and
a reviewer of manuscripts and grant proposals.
