ASA to Honor 2008 Founders Award Winners at Joint Statistical Meetings

The American Statistical Association (ASA), the nation's preeminent professional statistical society, has named the winners of its 2008 Founders Award, given to ASA members who have rendered distinguished service to the association. The award winners will be honored tonight at the Presidential Awards Session at the 2008 Joint Statistical Meetings at the Colorado Convention Center here.

Denver, CO (PRWEB) August 5, 2008 -- The American Statistical Association (ASA), the nation's preeminent professional statistical society, has named the winners of its 2008 Founders Award, given to ASA members who have rendered distinguished service to the association. The award winners will be honored tonight at the Presidential Awards Session at the 2008 Joint Statistical Meetings at the Colorado Convention Center here.

Selection criteria for the Founders Award include service over an extended period of time and in a variety of leadership roles, including chapter, section, committee, officer or editorial activities, in which effective service or leadership was provided within ASA or on behalf of ASA to other organizations. Two awards were presented this year; the 2008 winners are:

Linda Young, University of Florida, for extraordinary leadership of the ASA as vice president and as chair of the Council of Sections, Chair of the Section on Statistics Education and Chair of the Section on Statistics and the Environment, as well as leadership of many other statistical societies including service as president of the Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society (ENAR) and chair of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS); for outstanding contributions to leadership and scholarship in statistical methods research, particularly for agricultural, ecological, environmental and public health studies and in editorship of the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics.

David Scott, Rice University, for superb contributions and leadership in statistical research, particularly in multivariate density estimation and visualization, and in editorship of the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics; for service to ASA publication projects including electronic access to ASA journals; for outstanding leadership on a wide variety of grants advancing statistical methodology with NSF, ONR, NSA, USDA, USA and NASA; for consequential effects of organizing and chairing conferences including the Joint Statistical Meetings; for remarkable ability to direct and mentor students; for chairing the Section of Statistical Graphics; and for leadership in local Chapter activities.

About JSM
JSM, the world's largest annual gathering of statisticians, is held jointly with the American Statistical Association (ASA), the International Biometric Society (ENAR and WNAR), the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), and the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC). The theme for this year's conference is Communicating Statistics: Speaking Out and Reaching Out. A brief history of the JSM can be found at http://www.amstat.org/meetings/jsm/2008/pdfs/ABriefHistoryoftheASAAnnualMeetings.doc.

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. 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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