New year, new editors for probability journals

Four of the IMS probability journals are about to change hands, editorially speaking. The Annals of Probability will pass from the editorship of Ofer Zeitouni to Krzysztof Burdzy for three years until December 2014. The journal’s homepage is https://imstat.org/journals-and-publications/annals-of-probability/.

The IMS co-sponsored journal Probability Surveys (sponsored with the Bernoulli Society) will have as its new editor Laurent Saloff-Coste. Laurent will be taking over from Geoffrey Grimmett, also for a three-year term. The Probability Surveys webpage is https://imstat.org/journals-and-publications/probability-surveys/.

The joint IMS–Bernoulli Society journals Electronic Journal of Probability and Electronic Communications in Probability also have new editors from January 1. Michel Ledoux takes over from Bálint Tóth as the next editor of EJP, and Anton Bovier takes the reins from Timo Seppäläinen for ECP. The journals’ websites are, respectively, http://www.math.washington.edu/~ejpecp and http://www.math.washington.edu/~ejpecp/ECP/index.php

Many thanks to Ofer, Geoffrey, Bálint and Timo for their service.

Michael Longnecker Wins 2011 Mu Sigma Rho Education Award

Each year, Mu Sigma Rho honors someone who has proven to be one of the best teachers in our discipline with the National Mu Sigma Rho Statistics Education Award. This year, the award was presented to Professor Michael Longnecker of Texas A&M University, at the 2011 Joint Statistical Meetings in Miami on August 3. Pictured here are Professor Longnecker, right, “in action” with his two Teaching Technology Assistants working on materials for a distance learning section of a course.

Last year the award was won by James J. Cochran of Louisiana Tech University.

Nominations are sought for next year’s award: please see http://www.stat.purdue.edu/~mccabe/msr/nominee2012.pdf

Xuming He moves to University of Michigan

Xuming He joined the Department of Statistics at the University of Michigan, as Harry C. Carver Professor of Statistics, in September. Xuming completed his PhD in Statistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1989. He was at the National University of Singapore from 1989 to 1993 and moved to UIUC where he was on the faculty for 18 years. This period includes a stint as Program Director of Statistics at the NSF from 2003 to 2005. His research spans a wide range of areas of semiparametric and nonparametric statistics – robust statistics, quantile regression, and data depth. He has been extensively involved in interdisciplinary work, including bioinformatics, dysphagia research, educational testing, and climate research. Xuming is a passionate teacher and mentor; he has supervised over 20 doctoral students, many pursuing successful careers in statistics and biostatistics. Xuming is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, ASA, and IMS. He holds Honorary Professorships at the University of Hong Kong and at the School of Management at Fudan University. Xuming is currently chairing the Scientific Program Committee for the 2013 ISI World Statistics Congress and is Co-editor of JASA (Theory & Methods).