Ten students applied for North Carolina State University Undergraduate Research Awards and won! Each of 4 projects won $750 for a total of $3000 in awards. The students and their projects are:

1. Jason Leone and Jamie Pearce , “Forecasting Wild Fires and Examining the Impact of Global Climate Change.” Also contributing is Stephanie Bruns, who will be graduating in December. The work is being done for Dr. Linda Chappell of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA).
2. Steven Somers, Ashley Myers and Erika Burger , “Can Blood Lead Levels in Children be Reduced?” The work is being done for Dr. Barry Nussbaum, Chief Statistician, USEPA.
3. Jennifer James, Camille Clark and William Jeff Rice, “Crustal Matter: Exploring the Differences Between Ambient Air Samples and Emission Inventories.” The work is being done for Mr. Tom Pace and Mr. Josh Drukenbrod of the USEPA.
4. Kristen Gore and Nicole Bader, “Meteorologically Adjusted Fine Particulate Matter Trend Analysis.” Also contributing is Marshall Gaddis. The work is being done for Mr. George Bridgers, Mrs. Bebhinn Do and Mr. Pat Bello of the North Carolina Department of the Environment and Natural Resources.

Their work will be presented at the 2008 Sigma Xi Annual Meeting and Student Research Conference in Washington, DC on November 21 and/or the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium (SNCURCS) in Boone, NC on November 22.

The department would also like to acknowledge William “Bill” Hunt for his leadership, guidance, and support of these students. We believe he contributes tremendously to our undergraduate program and plays a significant role in each student’s success.

Sastry Pantula, Nancy Ridenhour, Pam Arroway

On November 6, 2008, PAMS held an Alumni Awards Celebration to present three awards. Nancy Ridenhour received the Zenith Medal for Service, which recognizes alumni or friends of the College for distinguished contributions or advocacy that significantly advance our ability to make powerful impacts on science, the economy, the environment and the quality of the human condition. Nancy received bachelor’s degree in statistics from our department in 1976 and went to work for what was then Cannon Mills. She spent the next 17 years in the textile, financial and computer consulting industries before going into business for herself in 1993 as an independent business technology analyst. Since then, she has provided expert advice and computer solutions to the likes of Bank of America, Wachovia and Duke Energy. An active leader in her field, Nancy is a member of the Independent Computer Consultants Association and has served on that organization’s national board. She chaired the Charlotte North Special Interest Group for the Charlotte Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners for more than three years. She serves as publicity chair for the Southeast Inter-Relational Database Users Group and is a member of the Lake Norman Chamber and North Carolina Technology Association. She has served on the board of the NC State Alumni Association and served three terms on the board of the NCSU Physical and Mathematical Sciences Foundation.

Congratulations Nancy!

At this event, Dr. Jim Goodnight of SAS also announced establishing a Leroy Martin Distinguished Professorship in Mathematics. Dr. Martin received the Distinguished Alumni Award from PAMS this year. Suzanne Gordon, another distinguished alum of our department from SAS, also attended the dinner.

I am pleased to announce that, through a generous donation from one of our alumni, Dr. Charles (Chuck) Wakeford (Ph.D. 1995), the PAMS Foundation established a William H. Swallow Fellowship Award. According to the agreement, recipients of the William H. Swallow Fellowship Award(s) will be selected by a Committee of the Department of Statistics appointed by the Department Head, in accordance with the established procedures for awarding merit-based awards. First preference shall be for students who express interest in pursuing a career in academia. The Committee may also consider recipients who would diversify the student body, including groups underrepresented in the student population by race, color, sexual orientation or sexual identity to the extent allowable by law. This award may go to either an undergraduate or a graduate student.

We had an endowment signing ceremony today in 400 Cox. I want to thank Chuck and family for their thoughtfulness and generosity. I also want to thank Anita Stallings and others in PAMS Foundation who continue to look out for opportunities for our department.

Suraj Prakash Anand received the 2008 Statistics/Biostatistics Quintiles Scholarship Award. Quintiles selects two students annually who are well rounded and demonstrate great potential for leadership in the Statistics/Biostatistics field. The goal of this award is to identify and develop talent in the Statistics/Biostatistics field. Suraj Prakash Anand is a Ph.D student in Statistics at North Carolina State University. His advisor is Dr. Sujit Ghosh. He has an excellent GPA in his Ph.D program and has been working as a Graduate Industrial Trainee in Clinical Pharmacology and Statistical Sciences at GlaxoSmithKline Research and Development in RTP. Suraj also has a Masters degree in Statistics. He expects to graduate this semester and start his job in January with Novartis. He presents his research to scientists at Quintiles on October 14, 2009.

The Department of Statistics, along with corporate partner GlaxoSmithKline, received
the 2008 SPAIG (Statistical Partnerships among Academe, Industry and Government)
award for their collaboration in NC State’s Graduate Industrial Traineeship (GIT) program.
The GIT program, which was also publicized in the Feb 08 issue of Amstat News places
students at area companies to get hands-on experience and work in teams with excellent
mentors. The award was given at the 2008 Joint Statistical Meetings in Denver.

Anthony Franklin (Statistics graduate student) received a 2008 Ford Foundation
Diversity Fellowship. This fellowship program is administered by the National Research
Council of the National Academies and seeks to increase the diversity of the nation’s college
and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, to maximize the
educational benefits of diversity, and to increase the number of professors who can
and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students. Franklin was
one of only 120 scholars to receive either the predoctoral, dissertation or postdoctoral
award.

At the 19th Annual Conference of The International Environmetrics Sociey, Amy Nail won the award for Best Student Presentation for work completed as a student. She presented her dissertation research: Quantifying local creation and regional transport using a hierarchical space-time model of ozone as a function of observed NOx, a latent space-time VOC process, emissions, and meteorology.