The annual NISS Reception is traditionally held at the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) each year. It is a great time to visit with colleagues that you might not have seen in a while and get that personal update. In addition, it is also a time where new connections are made and new friendships and collaborations begin. For many years NISS has held their reception in conjunction with SAMSI. Each year NISS Affiliates and friends of NISS and SAMSI look forward to this event.
View the Photo Album for this Event!
The Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research is presented at this reception. This award honors Jerry Sacks, who was the first Director of NISS and a distinguished statistician who made significant contributions to the Statistics bridge theory, methodology and collaborative science and engineering. This year the recipient of this very prestigious award is Jeremy M.G. Taylor of the University of Michigan. Dr. Taylor serves as the Pharmacia Research Professor of Biostatistics. He also holds appointments in Biostatistics and Radiation Oncology, and Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan. And he is Director of the Center for Cancer Biostatistics. For additional information about this award and Dr. Taylor, please see the news story, “Jerome Taylor Recipient of the 2019 Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research.”
NISS also presents the Distinguished Service Award to recognize individuals who have given extraordinary service to advance NISS and its mission. This year, the award was presented to both Mary Batcher and Nell Sedransk. Mary Batcher is completing six years of service on the NISS Board of Trustees of which the last four years she served as chair. Nell Sedransk has served NISS since 2005, first as associate director until 2014, then as director from 2015 through 2017, and since then director of the Washington, DC office. Both of these women have provided NISS with exemplary service for at least the past decade and remain at the heart of NISS activity. For additional information about this award and Dr. Batcher and Dr. Sedransk, please see the news story, “Batcher and Sedransk Recognized for Service to NISS.”
In addition, the NISS Distinguished Alumni Award is given to recognize NISS Postdocs who have moved on from NISS and established distinguished careers. This year this award to presented to Professor Haibo Zhou. Dr. Zhou is a full professor with tenure in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is also the director for the Biostatistics Core at the Center for Environmental Medicine, Asthma and Lung Biology and director of the Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility, both at UNC. For additional information about this award and Dr. Haibo Zhou, please see the news story, “Dr. Haibo Zhou Receives NISS Distinguished Alumni Award at JSM 2019.”
Finally, David Banks, Director of SAMSI formally announced the official collaborative connection between SAMSI and the East China Normal University in Shanghai. There was a formal signing of the Memorandum of Understanding to recognize this new collaborative relationship. Professor Riquan Zhang, the Executive Deputy Director of the Key Laboratory of Advanced Theory and Application in Statistics and Data Science at the East China Normal University in Shanghai was present for the signing ceremony.