American Statistical Association Announces Winners of Gertrude M. Cox Scholarships

The American Statistical Association (ASA) has announced that Daniela Witten (Stanford) and Brianna C. Hirst (UC Berkeley) are the 2008 winners of the annual Gertrude M. Cox scholarships. Since 1989, the Cox Scholarship, named for a female pioneer in statistics, has been awarded annually by the ASA Committee on Women in Statistics and the Caucus for Women in Statistics to encourage women to enter statistically oriented professions.

Denver, CO (PRWEB) August 4, 2008 -- The American Statistical Association (ASA) has announced that Daniela Witten and Brianna C. Hirst are the 2008 winners of the annual Gertrude M. Cox scholarships. Since 1989, the Cox Scholarship has been awarded annually by the ASA Committee on Women in Statistics and the Caucus for Women in Statistics to encourage women to enter statistically oriented professions. The scholarship awards will be presented Tuesday, August 5, at the President's Address session of the Joint Statistical Meetings at the Colorado Convention Center here.

Witten is a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University. She received her MS in Statistics and her BS in math and biology, both from Stanford. Hirst is a graduate of St. Olaf College and will begin a Ph.D. program at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall.

Cox, who was born in 1900, was a pioneer in the newly formed, predominantly male discipline of statistics and one of the first women in the field. She became the first woman -- and the first person -- to receive a master's degree in statistics from Iowa State University. In 1939 she was appointed an assistant professor of statistics at Iowa Sate, then became a professor of statistics at North Carolina State University at Raleigh in 1940. She helped to establish the Department of Experimental Statistics at North Carolina State University, the Institute of Statistics of the Consolidated University of North Carolina, and the Statistics Research Division of the Research Triangle Institute. In 1949, she became the first female elected into the International Statistical Institute; she was President of the American Statistical Association in 1956 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1975.

Women who are entering or who are in the early stages of graduate training (MS or PhD) are especially encouraged to apply for the Cox Scholarship. All applications for the 2009 awards must be in by April 1, 2009. Applicants must submit an application form and academic reference letter, both of which can be downloaded at http://www.amstat.org/awards/CoxApplicationForm.doc. The awards are in the amount of $1,000 each.

About the American Statistical Association
The American Statistical Association (ASA), a scientific and educational society founded in Boston in 1839, is the second oldest continuously operating professional society in the United States. For more than 160 years, ASA has been providing its 18,000 members serving in academia, government, and industry and the public with up-to-date, useful information about statistics. Located in Alexandria, VA, the ASA has a proud tradition of service to statisticians, quantitative scientists, and users of statistics across a wealth of academic areas and applications. For additional information about the American Statistical Association, please visit the association's web site at http://www.amstat.org or call 703.684.1221.

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