Chapter Awards

The NC ASA Chapter is pleased to announce three award winners! The 2021 Service Award winner is Dr. Emily Griffith. The Senior Statistician Award winners are Dr. Sonia Thomas and Dr. Cynthia Rudin. Celebrate these impactful statisticians with us!

Dr. Emily Griffith is an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Statistics at NC State University and the Director of Data Science Consulting in NC State's Data Science Academy. She has a strong record of collaborative statistical work across a broad range of disciplines, including veterinary medicine, engineering, education, and paleontology. Emily served on the NC ASA Executive Board as Vice President 2 (2017), Vice President (2018), and President (2019) and enjoys continuing to be involved in promoting the profession and practice of statistics across the state of North Carolina through NC ASA.

Dr. Sonia Thomas received her BSPH, MS, and DrPH degrees in Biostatistics from UNC and is a Senior Research Statistician at RTI International.  She is a Data Coordinating Center PI on NIH and non-profit funded clinical trials and is currently involved in the NHLBI CONNECTS COVID 19 clinical trials Administrative Coordinating Center.  She has held past positions as Senior Director of Biostatistics at Quintiles, Inc (now IQVIA); Director of the UNC Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center and Professor of the Practice of Biostatistics at UNC, where she taught leadership for biostatisticians. She joined RTI in 2017 and maintains an Adjunct appointment at UNC. Sonia specializes in collaborative design, implementation, and analysis of clinical trials. Her statistical interests include non-inferiority, adaptive clinical trials, interim analysis, repeated measures analysis, and methods to address missing data caused by early study discontinuation.

Dr. Cynthia Rudin is a professor of computer science, electrical and computer engineering, statistical science, mathematics, and biostatistics & bioinformatics at Duke University. She directs the Interpretable Machine Learning Lab, whose goal is to design predictive models with reasoning processes that are understandable to humans. Her lab applies machine learning in many areas, such as healthcare, criminal justice, and energy reliability. She holds an undergraduate degree from the University at Buffalo, and a PhD from Princeton University. She is the recipient of the 2022 Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (the "Nobel Prize of AI"). She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and AAAI. Her work has been featured in many news outlets including the NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Boston Globe.

2020 Awards

Service Award
The NC ASA would like to honor the dedication and service of Brian Gaines to the NC ASA. Brian is a research statistician developer at SAS.


Senior Statistician award
NC ASA is proud to honor two Senior Statisticians for their outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of statistics in North Carolina:

Gayle Bieler - Gayle is the senior director for the Center for Data Science at RTI International.
Jacqueline Hughes-Oliver - Jackie is a full professor of statistics at North Carolina State University.



2019 Awards
The 2019 NC ASA Awards were announced at our Annual Fall Dinner and were recognized in AmStat News!

2019 NC ASA Senior Statistician Awards
NC ASA is proud to honor two Senior Statisticians for their outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of statistics, particularly for their roles in the development of the subject in North Carolina:
* Alyson Wilson, Professor of Statistics and Principal Investigator for the Laboratory of Analytic Sciences at NCSU
* Steve Marron, Amos Hawley, Professor of Statistics and Operations Research at UNC

2019 North Carolina Chapter Service and Contribution Awards
NC ASA is honored to recognize Fang Chen, Development Director in the Advanced Analytics Division at SAS Institute Inc., for his long-standing support of the NC Chapter.

2019 ASA Award for Outstanding Chapter Service
NC ASA was delighted to present to Elizabeth Mannshardt, Statistician at the US EPA, the ASA Award for Outstanding Chapter Service, for her extraordinary service and leadership as NC ASA president in 2018.

2018 Awards
NC ASA 2018 Award Winners were recognized in AmStat News!

2018 Student Awardees:

NC ASA and AISC Young Researcher Award winners included the following:

• Yunran Chen and Siyun Yang of Duke University
• Isabel Gesen* of Elon University
• Vincent Davis and Shana McDowell* of North Carolina Central University
• Jesse Clifton, Lin Dong, Sohini Raha, Eric Rose, Lili Wu, and Zekun Xu of North Carolina State University
• Sean McCabe* and Jonathan William* of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Julia Haines* of Wake Forest University
• Qiuyi Wu of SAMSI

*These young researchers are also members of the NC ASA Scholastic Council, an initiative to coordinate activities and disseminate information to North Carolina’s schools, colleges, and universities.

2018 North Carolina Chapter Service and Contribution Awards
NC ASA is honored to recognize two statisticians for their long and outstanding service to the NC Chapter. Awardees will be honored at the AISC Banquet and Awards Ceremony Saturday, Oct 6^th.
Awardees announced via the NC ASA Newsletter Summer Edition May 22.

Breda Munoz, RTI - past NC ASA President, Breda remains an active member.  Breda continues to work with the NC ASA Executive Board, organizing events and opportunities for high school statistics students and teachers, providing a vital outreach to an under-served part of North Carolina's statistics community.  Breda also served as a Mentor in NC ASA's first mentoring event this spring - an important role in our service to our young professionals.

Sujit Ghosh, NCSU - past NC ASA President, Sujit remains a very active member, attending many events.  Sujit continues to work with the NC ASA Executive Board via his work as the Core Strategic Team Lead for NC ASA's newly developed Industry Interests Group.  Sujit has worked on the IIG's agenda, spearheading implementation of many ideas and initiatives.  He is actively working to implement an NC ASA survey of members to gauge interests and needs of the community, and has plans to organize events to meet these needs.

2018 NC ASA Senior Statistician Awards at AISC

NC ASA is proud to honor Senior Statisticians for their outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of statistics, particularly for their roles in the development of the subject in North Carolina.

Senior Statistician Awardees will be honored at the AISC Banquet and Awards Ceremony and are featured as AISC Plenary Speakers.

• Sat Gupta, 2014
• Richard Smith, 2014
• Butch Tsiatis, 2014
• Mike West, 2014
• Hrishikesh Chakraborty
• Bob Rodriguez
• Sastry Pantula
• Marie Davidian
• P K Sen
• Alan Garlfand
• Jim Chromy
• Jim Berger
• Jason Brinkley
• Malcolm Ross Leadbetter
• Peter Bloomfield
• Merlise Clyde
• Dan Solomon