Welcome and thank you for reading our year-in-review issue of the Stat-50 Newsletter!
The Stat-50 Newsletter series commemorates the Department of Statistics in our 50th anniversary year. This possibly over-ambitious project aims to send monthly highlights of various aspects of the Department of Statistics. This month is more reminiscent of our paper-based newsletters of old (archives are online). I hope that you will enjoy reading about the goings-on in the department this year, and that you are not too bothered by indulging my impulse to reach a bit further back to include happenings from 2023 as well as some foreshadowing toward 2025. We have omitted the 50th anniversary event, since you presumably have already read about it in the November newsletter. Though this was a highlight of the year, we have lots to celebrate as this year comes to an end.
I am incredibly proud of our faculty and students, who have produced innovative work this year, culminating in an impressive number of awards, publications, and presentations. The service of our faculty and alumni to the field of statistics continues to make lasting and broad impacts to academia, industry, and non-profit or governmental organizations. Additionally, we welcomed five new faculty members and new staff members. As many of you know, searching for new employees is very exciting, but also quite draining. I am grateful that our community stuck through the extremely long hiring season last year so that we could together joyfully welcome so many new colleagues! Thank you very much to Mario Peruggia, Michelle Everson and John Pieper for chairing search committees, as well as the other faculty and staff who served on these committees. We have already begun to welcome candidates to campus for this years’ searches, and hope to have a good number on new colleagues join us in the department over the coming year.
Our current complement of faculty and staff also have much to be proud of. In addition to the activities and awards throughout the articles in this newsletter, Shili Lin has been named Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). Shili received the honor for excellent research in methodological and computational statistical genetics and genomics and applications to human diseases; for leadership in mentoring students and junior researchers; and for outstanding service to the profession. While we had no new American Statistical Association (ASA) fellows, Matthias Katzfuss (PhD 2011) did receive this honor. Our students have also had their hard work recognized outside of the University. For example, Yi Tang Chen (PhD Biostatistics student) was runner-up for the 2024 Statistical Methods in Imaging Conference student paper competition.
Our educational programs as a whole continue to thrive. As of autumn semester of 2024, we have 102 graduate students pursing a PhD in Statistics or Biostatistics, a MAS or MS in Statistics, or a graduate minor in Statistics or Statistical Data Analysis. There are 237 undergraduates seeking a Statistics major, 199 admitted to the Data Analytics (DA) major and another 185 in the DA pre-major, who are likely planning to apply to the DA major soon. Unlike the statistics major, the DA major is capped and so has competitive admissions. Including the Statstics minor students, there are 714 undergraduate students pursuing degrees in statistics and DA! As we are actively filling out our cohort of faculty, we are happy to start offering new or redesigned elective courses. In spring 2024, we were able to offer a course on the Statistical Analysis of Networks taught by Subhadeep Paul, and in spring 2025 we plan to offer courses on Sports Statistics taught by Tom Metzger, Survey Sampling taught by myself, and a fun course called Pokémon and Probability taught by Laura Kubatko, who aims to pique interest in statistics among early career undergraduate students. As we continue to complete our major and minor curricula by expanding elective offerings at the undergraduate level, I expect that our cohort sizes will only grow! We are also offering more special topics courses at the graduate level, for which I am hearing very positive feedback from current students.
Behind the scenes, I am grateful to my primary leadership team – Chris Hans, Tom Metzger and Xinyi Xu, without whom none of the contents of this newsletter would have shined as brightly. I would also like to recognize the contributions of Alan Gan, Arko Gupta, and Yue Ma, who are serving as co-presidents of the Biostatistics and Statistics Graduate Student Association (BSGSA) this year. The Statistics and Biostatistics leadership are leaning heavily on these three to help us improve our practices and procedures in pursuit of improved graduate student recruitment and student experience at Ohio State.
I am thrilled to both reflect on the year the department has had as well as look to the future. The connections re-kindled through our anniversary celebration, along with the enthusiasm of our faculty, students, and staff and the growth of the statistics and data sciences fields each give our department a tremendous amount of momentum towards another successful year in 2025.
I hope you enjoy reading and celebrating the year(s) with us!
Sincerely,
Elly Kaizar
Professor and Chair, Department of Statistics