Abhirup Datta and Stephanie Hicks Elected Fellows of the American Statistical Association
ASA Fellowship is awarded to a select group of statisticians and data scientists who have made significant contributions to the field.
The Department of Biostatistics is proud to announce that associate professors Abhirup Datta, PhD, MS, and Stephanie Hicks, PhD, MA, have been elected as Fellows of the American Statistical Association (ASA), the world’s largest community of statisticians and data scientists. This prestigious honor recognizes their exceptional contributions to statistical sciences and their commitment to advancing the field.
The ASA Fellow designation has been a significant recognition in the statistical community for nearly a century. Each year, the ASA Committee on Fellows may elect up to one-third of one percent of the association’s membership as fellows. Nominees must demonstrate an established reputation and have made outstanding contributions to statistical science in research, education, industry, government, or service to the ASA and the broader profession.
Abhirup (Abhi), who joined the Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2016, develops and applies statistical and machine learning methods to address substantive questions in environmental health, climate sciences, and global health research. Abhi is a co-leader of the Department's Bayesian Learning & Spatio-temporal modeling (BLAST) Working Group, program chair for the ASA Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR), and Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A and B, Biometrics, Sankhya, and the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics. In 2024, Abhi was named an Emerging Leader Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS), and in 2023 won the Abdel El-Shaarawi Early Investigator's Award, from the International EnvironMetrics Society (TIES).
Stephanie, who joined the Bloomberg School in 2018, is an applied statistician working at the intersection of genomics and biomedical data science, whose research addresses computational challenges in single-cell genomics, epigenomics, and spatial transcriptomics leading to an improved understanding of human health and disease. Stephanie is a co-member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Genome Biology, a co-leader of the Department’s Genomic Data Science Working Group, a member of the Technical Advisory Board for Bioconductor, an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Statistical Association Reproducibility Guide, and co-founder of R-Ladies Baltimore. Stephanie received the Teaching in the Health Sciences Young Investigator Award in 2020 and the COPSS Emerging Leader Award in 2021. In 2023 she was awarded the Myrto Lefkopoulou Distinguished Lectureship from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
"It is wonderful to see Stephanie and Abhi receiving this recognition; they both represent the best of our field in terms of the quality and impact of their work, and their commitment to the field of statistics, including mentoring and teaching. We are lucky to have them as part of our Department and School!” notes Elizabeth Stuart, PhD, Frank Hurley and Catharine Dorrier Professor and Department Chair in Biostatistics.
Founded in 1839, the American Statistical Association serves members in more than 90 countries, advancing research, science, and technology; promoting sound statistical practice; informing public policy; and contributing to a world in which decisions are data-driven. For more information about the ASA Fellow Award and the American Statistical Association, visit their website.
