Sastry Pantula – 105th President of the American Statistical Association

Pantula, who will serve as President-Elect for 2009, heads new slate of officers; election turnout was largest in ASA history

ALEXANDRIA, VA (PRWEB) MAY 27, 2008 — The American Statistical Association (ASA), the nation’s preeminent professional statistical society, today announced the election of Sastry G. Pantula of North Carolina State University as president-elect of the Association for 2009. Pantula, who is the head of the NCSU Statistics Department and Director of the Institute of Statistics, will serve as ASA president beginning January 1, 2010. He will be the association’s 105th president.

Christy Chuang-Stein of Pfizer Inc. was selected as vice president. Jeri Metzger Mulrow of the National Science Foundation will serve as the Board representative for the Council of Sections, and David Marker of Westat will serve as the representative for the Council of Chapters. All their terms will begin January 1, 2009.

“Statistics is the backbone of scientific research,” Pantula said. “ASA, in collaboration with many other international associations and institutes, now has tremendous potential to advance science and guide public policy. The diversity of our membership and the cross-sectoral relationships among our members in academia, business, government, and industry provide a unique talent pool to address global problems related to health, environment, and resources. I am excited and humbled by this opportunity to serve ASA at this pivotal time.”

A 2002 Fellow of the ASA, Pantula was the recipient of the Department Head Award of the SAA-PAMS in 2005. He received the Young Statistician Award from the International Indian Statistical Association in 2002 and the D.D. Mason Faculty Award in 2001. He is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Xi, Gamma Sigma Delta, and Mu Sigma Rho. Pantula has been active in the ASA, serving as Program Officer for JSM 2000; Publications Officer, 2001-2004; Chair-elect 2007; COPSS Award Committee, 2002-2005; Youden Award Committee, 2004-2006. He has served as ASA Board Treasurer since 2005, and also has chaired the Finance and Audit Committees. He was the associate editor of The American Statistician from 1987-1993, and the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics from 2001-2006.

Pantula received his Ph.D. in Statistics from Iowa State University, and an MS and BS in Statistics from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, India. He became the statistics department head at NCSU in 2002, after serving the university as Assistant Department Head, Director of Graduate Programs, and Professor of Statistics. He is the author, with J.O. Rawlings and D. A. Dickey, of Applied Regression Analysis: A Research Tool, published by Springer Verlag, and of numerous articles.

Chuang-Stein serves as the executive director of the Statistical Research and Consulting Center at Pfizer. She is an associate editor for both the Drug Information Journal and the Encyclopedia of Clinical Trials. She was a founding editor and currently serves as an editorial board member of Pharmaceutical Statistics. A 1998 ASA Fellow, Chuang-Stein is an active ASA member and a current member of the ASA Fellows Committee. She served on the Executive Committee of the Biopharmaceutical Section of the ASA (1996-1999); as President of the South-West Michigan Chapter of ASA (1997); as Chair of the Biopharm annual workshop (1996 & 1997); and as Associate Editor for The American Statistician (1993-1999).

A complete list of the new ASA Board members, governing board members, and section officers is available at http://www.amstat.org/news/pdfs/2008electionresults.pdf.

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.