The Department of Statistics at Florida State University announced that Robert E. Kass, the Maurice Falk University Professor of Statistics and Computational Neuroscience in the Department of Statistics and Data Science, the Machine Learning Department and the Neuroscience Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, is the 2024 Myles Hollander Distinguished Lecturer. Kass will present Reasoning from Data in Science on October 4, 2024, on FSU’s Tallahassee campus. The live talk will also be accessible via Zoom (the registration link is at https://stat.fsu.edu/hollander-distinguished-lectureship-2024).

Rob Kass’s early work formed the basis for his co-authored book, Geometrical Foundations of Asymptotic Inference, and his subsequent research has sought to understand how reasoning from data produces reliable scientific knowledge. For Bayesian inference, Kass and colleagues provided comprehensive reassessment of the evaluation of evidence concerning hypotheses and determination of prior probabilities. Kass is a leader in the application of statistics to neuroscience, where he has focused on tractable data-analytic statistical models for spike trains, i.e., data representing the primary mode of communication among neurons, and co-authored the book Analysis of Neural Data.

Kass served as chair of the Statistics Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, founding editor-in-chief of Bayesian Analysis, and executive editor of Statistical Science. He received the Outstanding Statistical Application Award from the American Statistical Association and the COPSS Distinguished Achievement Award and Lectureship. Kass is an elected Fellow of the ASA, IMS and AAAS, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.