Still Life
University Park Airport Emergency Response Exercise
Commencement across Penn State: Spring 2012
Spring commencement 2012 under way
Penn State, Moroccan students problem-solve together
Finals Week Spring Semester 2012
Painting the Lines at Beaver Stadium
Did They Get It Right? - RedTails
Iconic Penn State elm taken down over spring break 2012
We ... are Penn State (December 19, 2011)
Disease stricken matching elm tree slated for removal
Penn State's creamery, from the cow to the cone
Penn State's C.R. Rao, emeritus holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Statistics, long recognized as one of the world's top statisticians, has been honored with his 35th and 36th honorary doctor of science degrees. The awarding universities are Karnatak University, located in Dharwad, India, and the International Sanskrit University, located in Tirupati, India. Rao was presented with the degrees at ceremonies at the respective universities. (more)
An assistant professor at Penn State has created a new statistical model that may enable fingerprint evidence to withstand greater scrutiny in court. Currently, some fingerprints that could be key pieces of evidence in court are not being considered because of shortcomings in the way this evidence is reported. Cedric Neumann, assistant professor of forensic science and statistics at Penn State, has devised a statistical model to enable the weight of fingerprint evidence to be expressed in quantitative terms, paving the way for its full inclusion in the criminal-identification process. Fingerprints have been used for over a century as a way of identifying criminals; however, fingerprint evidence is not currently permitted to be reported in court unless examiners claim absolute certainty that a mark has been left by a particular suspect. This courtroom certainty is based purely on the opinion of experts, formed through years of training and experience, but not on scientific data. (more)
Statistical skills are in increasingly high demand and being applied to an incredibly diverse set of exciting problems, said Penn State professor of statistics Naomi Altman. In short, noted Altman, "there are few areas of our lives in which statistics is not being used." (more)
James Rosenberger, professor of statistics at Penn State, has been honored with a Distinguished Service Award from the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS). The award was presented in August at a reception in Miami, Fla. The NISS Distinguished Service Awards were established by in 2005 to recognize individuals who have given extraordinary service that significantly advances NISS and its mission. (more)
Jia Li, associate professor of statistics at Penn State, and James Z. Wang, professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State, have been awarded the United States patent titled "Real-Time Computerized Annotation of Pictures." Li and Wang developed a unique computer system called ALIPR (Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures in Real-Time) that can suggest, in real time, several words describing the content of any general-purpose photograph using the pixel information alone. The automatic image-tagging system uses novel methods in statistical learning and data mining to link pictorial characteristics with English words. (more)
Runze Li, a professor of statistics at Penn State, has been honored with the Norbert Gerbier-MUMM International Award for 2012 for a paper written with co-authors from other institutions spanning six continents. The paper, "Climate control of terrestrial carbon exchange across biomes and continents," which was published in Environmental Research Letters, examines relationships between climate and the carbon exchange of land-based ecosystems to predict future levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Li, who is the only statistician among the 151 authors of this paper, used the statistical techniques known as mixture regression and two-dimensional kernel regression to analyze the data presented in the paper. The purpose of the Norbert Gerbier-MUMM International Award, which is presented by the World Meteorological Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, is "to encourage and reward annually an original scientific paper on the influence of meteorology in a particular field of the physical, natural, or human sciences, or on the influence of one of these sciences on meteorology." (more)
Dennis Lin, distinguished professor of statistics at Penn State, has been awarded the 2011 Don Owen Award from the American Statistical Association's San Antonio chapter. The president of the chapter, John Schoolfield, presented Lin with the award at the 2011 Conference of Texas Statisticians at Texas A&M University. Lin is recognized for his groundbreaking work in designing statistical experiments called supersaturated designs. These designs provide a major tool for practical use in industry and allow investigation of a large number of variables. He also is well known for his on statistical data mining. (more)
The Penn State Department of Statistics will host the 2011 Rao Prize Conference from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on May 19, in 100 Thomas Building on the University Park campus. This one-day conference, which is free and open to the public, will focus on statistics and probability. (more)
Bruce Lindsay, Willaman professor of statistics and head of the Department of Statistic at Penn State, has been honored as the recipient of the 2010 Fisher Lecture Award, presented by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies and sponsored by the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the International Biometric Society, and the Statistical Society of Canada. Lindsay delivered the 2010 Fisher Lecture, "Likelihood: Efficiency and Deficiency -- and the Special Role of Hidden Variables," in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. (more)
Penn State's C.R. Rao, emeritus holder of the Eberly family chair in statistics and one of the world's top statisticians, has been honored with the India Science Award for his significant contributions to the field of statistical science during a career spanning six decades. (more)
