Dr. Geoffrey Vining
| Greetings
from the Department Head, Dr. Geoffrey Vining |
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Happy New Year! A lot has been going on in the Department this year! Most of it has been pretty exciting.
Eric Smith and Geoff Vining were named Fellows of the American Statistical Association. We now have five Fellows among the active faculty plus four more Fellows among the emeritus faculty. Very few departments of our size have so many Fellows, which is a true testimonial about the strength of our department.
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Of
Significance...
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 Corporate Partners Conference 2001 |
Bill Woodall winning the Brumbaugh Award from the American Society for Quality was another important highlight for the department. This prestigious award is given annually to recognize the paper published in an ASQ journal which has made the greatest contribution to the development of industrial applications of quality control.
Much of the Department's energy has been focused on our VIGRE grant submission. VIGRE (Vertical Integration of Graduate and Research Education) is a major initiative from the Mathematical Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation designed to revamp how mathematics and statistics departments do business. We are considering a lot of new ideas for getting undergraduates interested in research, for recruiting more students into our Ph.D. program, and for mentoring these students once they are here. We are also looking at how to improve our curriculum. Several exciting ideas include one-hour special topics courses and "tracks," such as industrial, environmental, econometric, and bioinformatics. Jeff Birch has been doing an excellent job leading and coordinating our efforts.
This fall, we held our initial Corporate Partners Conference. Golde Holtzman put a great deal of work into this program, and it was quite successful. Our Corporate Partners provide crucial financial support that allows the department to make enhanced graduate assistantship offers. In addition, the Corporate Partners provide advice and counsel to the department.
Last summer, the Department hosted the SPES-IMS Spring Research Conference at the Hotel Roanoke. Christine Anderson-Cook did a great job as the local organizing chair.
This fall, the department also hosted the Business Meeting for the Southern Regional Council for Statistics, the old SREB. Representatives from the major statistics program across the South came to exchange ideas. Blacksburg proved to be a big hit with this group.
This spring, the Department is hosting a special conference in honor of Ray Myers. You can find details off our web page. Please plan to attend. We would love to see you again here in Blacksburg.
Unfortunately, not every thing is rosy here in Blacksburg. The recession combined with September 11 has taken a toll on the Commonwealth's economy. All of the Universities in Virgina, including Virginia Tech, face a significant callback of funds. Everyone expects the situation to be temporary. Nonetheless, it is somewhat painful.
We hope that all of you are doing well. If you are ever in the area, please drop by and see us. It is always good to visit with our alumni and friends. As well, we encourage you to take advantage of the Alumni News section, which we hope will make keeping up with some of your peers possible. We also enjoy hearing your news and staying in touch.
Geoff
New Faculty
The Department of Statistics was delighted to welcome 3 new faculty members to our department in the Fall of 2001:
 Samantha
Bates joined us after graduating from the Department of Statistics
with both her Masters of Sciences and Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
Her areas of research include Bayesian inference, Markov chain Monte Carlo
methods, deterministic models, model validation and environmental statistics.
She won the Best Paper in Risk Assessment and shared the Best Student Presentation award, at the 2001 meeting of The International Environmetrics Society, and a Student Paper award at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the Society of Risk Analysis. Sam did her undergraduate work at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. |
 Dan
Spitzner joined the department from the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill. In 1994, Dan graduated with both a Masters and Bachelor
of Sciences from the Virginia Tech Department of Statistics. His dissertation
research was in the area of shrinkage estimation under the direction of
R.L. Smith. His interests are in linear models, functional data analysis,
biased estimation methods, decision theory, and high-dimensional inference.
He has published applied research in the areas of particulate matter epidemiology,
and the physiology of human tactile perception. He is currently teaching
Statistics in Research. |
| Philippe Barbe joined our department from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France. He obtained his Diploma of Statistician from Ecole Nationale de las Statistique et de l'Administration Economique in Paris in 1998. He has been a visiting professor in recent years at Yale University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Universite' Laval. He has published two books "Cours de Probabilite pour la Licence" and "The Weighted Bootstrap". His areas of research interest are currently an intersection of statistics, probability, asymptotic analysis, and differential geometry. |
News
and Special Honors
Dr. G. Geoffrey Vining (below left) and Dr. Eric Smith (below right) were named Fellows of the American Statistical Association. It is a great honor to our department for two people to be named Fellow in a single year. Congratulations to Geoff and Eric!
The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors have officially approved Dr. Oliver Schabenberger's promotion to Associate Professor with tenure in March 2001. He was also appointed Research Affiliate in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University.
Bill Woodall received the Brumbaugh Award from the American Society for Quality (ASQ) for "the paper published in an ASQ journal which has made the greatest contribution to the development of industrial applications of quality control." The paper was Woodall, W. H. (2000), "Controversies and Contradictions in Statistical Process Control," (with discussion), Journal of Quality Technology, 32, 341-378. (available for downloading at http://www.asq.org/pub/jqt )
Angie Patterson (Neff), a former graduate of our department, is currently a Visiting Professor in our department, while also continuing her work at General Electric.
Christine Anderson-Cook
and Sundar Dorai-Raj were awarded the 2001 Best
Contributed Paper for the American Statistical Association Section on Statistical
Education at the Joint Statistical Meetings.
Christine Anderson-Cook was awarded the 2001 Best Paper in the Propulsion Section at the American Helicopter Society International Forum. Her co-authors were Karl Sheldon and Walter O'Brien.
Graduate students, Megan Waterman and Seth Clark were winners of the Best Student Paper and Honorable Mention, respectively, for their presentations at the Virginia Academy of Sciences in Harrisonburg, VA in May 2001.
Jeff Birch was named Director of Graduate Programs in Statistics at Virginia Tech (that is the new name for the graduate administrator), replacing Jesse Arnold in July, 2001.
Bill Woodall is continuing as Editor of the Journal of Quality Technology.
Christine Anderson-Cook is the Program-Chair for 2003 for the Section of Quality and Productivity in the American Statistical Association. She is also an Associate Editor of Reviews for the Journal of the American Statistical Association.
Ina Hoeschele taught each part of Module 12 (QTL mapping II), an international 3-day short-course, which is part of the Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics at North Carolina State University, offered to graduate students, postgraduate fellows, faculty and industry scientists in the computational and biological sciences.
Ina Hoeschele presented an invited lecture in the international 8-day short-course on "Mathematical Approaches to the Analysis of Complex Phenotypes" at the Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, Maine), training mathematicians and biologists in the application of statistics and genetics to the study of human disease.
Ina Hoeschele was a co-organizer of the Virginia Tech Workshop on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, March 19, 2001.
Klaus Hinkelmann presented a series of lectures on "Design and Analysis of Factorial Experiments" and a colloquium "Statistik als Wissenschaft, Kunst und Macht" at the Graduate College of the University of Dortmund (Germany).
A number of faculty and graduate students gave presentations at regional and national conferences during the past year as well. Here are some of the highlights:
At the Plant and Animal Genome IX conference (an international conference on the status of plant and animal genome research) in January 2001:
At the Spring Meetings of the Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society in Charlotte, NC in March 2001:
At the Virginia Academy of Sciences in Harrisonburg, VA in May 2001:
At the Spring Research Conference in Roanoke, VA in June 2001:
At the SIAM Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA in July 2001:
At the Joint Statistical Meetings in Atlanta, GA in August 2001:
At the American Agricultural Association Meetings in Chicago in August, 2001:
At the International Environmetrics Society conference in Portland, Oregon in August 2001:
At the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Boston, MA in November 2001:
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Corporate Partners Conference 2001
The Department of Statistics
Corporate Partners Program was conceived last year with the goal of solidifying
and formalizing the strong relationships that have flourished between industry
and our department over the past 50 years. A most successful step toward that
goal was taken early in November--Thursday the 8th through Saturday the 10th
--when our faculty and graduate students hosted the first annual Corporate Partners
Program Conference. Lodging, meals, and local transportation were provided for
two representatives of each corporate partner so that we could make the most
of our weekend together. The conference featured:
Representatives
from Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals, Minitab, Inc., DuPont, and General Electric
participated. Matt Rotelli and Janet Bernard came from Indianapolis on behalf
of Eli Lilly, Gwen Stimely came from University Park, Pennsylvania and Jennifer
Roan came from the Research Triangle of North Carolina on behalf of Minitab,
Inc. Bill Letsinger came from Delaware on behalf of DuPont, while Angie
Neff Patterson, who taught here last fall as a visiting professor, represented
General Electric.
The conference started of Thursday evening with a wine-and-cheese social at
the home of Geoff Vining. Friday morning some of the partners met with the departmental
Advisory Committee, while others began a series of one-on-one interviews with
masters and doctoral candidates that continued through Saturday afternoon.
A
research colloquium convened Friday afternoon chaired by Professor Bill
Woodall. Ina Hoeschele (joint professor of statistics and genetics) , and
five graduate students--Ed Boone, Seth Clark, Paula Johnson, Rachelle Koudelik,
Ilya Lipkovitch, and Megan Waterman--presented brief overviews of their
current research projects. The activities culminated Friday evening in a
spirited dinner-party attended by nearly the entire department at Anchy's.
The general consensus was that the benefits of the conference were well worth the hard work of all who participated. By the end of the evening Friday, many new relationships had formed among the partners, graduate students and faculty.
For further details of the 2001 conference and the Corporate Partners Program, please visit the website at http://www.stat.vt.edu/partners/index.html. And, if anyone in your company is curious about the possibilities for recruitment, consultation, or collaboration with the statistics department that produced its finest employees (i.e., you), please do not hesitate to contact Geoff Vining (vining@vt.edu, 540-231-5657) or Golde Holtzman (holtzman@vt.edu, 540-231-8356).
Grant News
The faculty continues to be active in the pursuit of external funding. These efforts are likely to increase in the future. Recent awards include a $19,016 grant of the Virginia Water Resource Research Center to Eric P. Smith and Keying Ye. The same investigators are also currently working on a $266,388 grant from the U.S. EPA entitled "Assessing the Effects of Multiple Stressors in Environmental Monitoring Programs". Keying Ye was awarded a Virginia Tech ASPIRES grant in the amount of $41,852 as co-principal investigator with Dr. Shannon Jarrott of the Department of Human Development. William H. Woodall is completing research on a $83,932 NSF grant entitled "Collaborative Research: Multivariate Methods for On-Line and Off-Line Quality Control and Improvement".
Continuing the department's storied tradition in experimental design, J. P. Morgan has recently been awarded a National Science Foundation grant in the amount of $172,500 for his proposal "Block Designs: Advances in Theory and Use." Through a combination of theory and computing, the project will greatly expand the known catalog for optimal block designs. The grant is for three years, of which six months will be spent with collaborators at the University of London.
Recent Graduates
The year 2000-2001 saw 3 Ph.D. degrees, 13 Masters of Sciences degrees, and 4 Bachelor of Science degrees awarded by the department.
The Ph.D. degrees were granted to the following students:
 From left: Dr. Oliver Schabenberger & Sundaras Dorai-Raj |
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For a complete list of recent
dissertation titles,go to Dissertations
on our Graduate Webpage.
The Master of Sciences graduates
for 2000-2001 are the following:
 From left: Brooke Marshall, Joseph Warfield, Paula Johnson, and Xin Zhong |
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| The Bachelor of Science graduates for 2000-2001 with a major in statistics are Branden Elizabeth Boe, Scott Edward Glesner, Daniel Joseph Mazza, and Jeffrey Grayson Miller. Daniel Mazza has continued his studies in our department as he is pursuing a Master of Science degree. |
 From left: Jeffrey Grayson Miller, Scott Edward Glesner, Michele Marini, Branden Elizabeth Boe, and Daniel Joseph Mazza. |
Recent Publications
Books (2001)
Articles (2001)
Book Reviews (2001)
The Department of Statistics
is planning to hold a "Workshop on Response Surface Methodology: Theory
and Application" in honor of Dr. Raymond H. Myers for his 40 years of
contribution and dedication in research and education to the Department of
Statistics and to the statistical societies and industry. The workshop will
be held April 19-20, 2002 at the Hotel Four Points by Sheraton, 900 Prices
Fork Road, Blacksburg, VA 24060. For more information about the workshop,
please check the workshop
homepage.
The Department of Statistics will be holding its second annual program of Virginia Tech Seminars on Statistics during the week of May 13-17, 2002. Courses will be offered in two sessions:
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May
13-15
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| Statistical Methods | Instructor: Robert S. Schulman |
| Linear and Nonlinear Regression | Instructor: Jeffrey B. Birch |
| Bayesian Methods | Instructor: Keying Ye |
| Design of Experiments | Instructor: Christine Anderson-Cook |
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May
15-17
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| Multivariate Methods | Instructor: Eric P. Smith |
| Advanced Regression | Instructor: Jeffrey B. Birch |
| Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys | Instructor: Jesse C. Arnold |
| Response Surface Methodology | Instructor: G. Geoffrey Vining |
| Spatial Statistics | Instructor: Oliver Schabenberger |
The program will be held
at the Hilton Garden Inn, Washington DC Franklin Square, 815 14th Street,
N.W., Washington D.C. To receive a brochure or registration information, contact
Beverly Turner at: (540) 231-2188 or e-mail at: bevturner@vt.edu.
For more detailed information visit our website at: http://www.conted.vt.edu/stat.htm
Registration deadline is April 26, 2002.
"From Consultant to Effective Leader"
This conference is designed to
enhance the effectiveness of statisticians in business and industry, particularly
as it relates to exhibiting leadership. The goal is to help statisticians
transition from being viewed as passive consultants to being viewed as proactive
leaders within their organizations. In preparation for this conference, several
senior business leaders, CEOs and other executives were interviewed to obtain
their insights into how statisticians can have more impact. These insights
will be shared and discussed at the conference.
Tell me more: www.conted.vt.edu/quality.htm
Where: Hotel Roanoke in Roanoke, Virginia
When: April 26-27, 2002
For further information
about the
conference please contact:
Van Bowen, Chair, Statistics Division, ASQ
email: vbowen@richmond.edu
(804) 399-9830