ÑÇÖÞAV

A postdoc program for health researchers interested in statistics and data science, run jointly by George Mason’s statistics and global and community health departments, with mentors from Mason and Inova Health, has developed from the ongoing partnership between Inova Health and George Mason’s Statistics Collaboration Core. Mohamad Bahij Moumneh, MD, and Jason F. Goldberg, MD, are the program’s standing inaugural members.

As term associate professor of statistics, Kenneth Strazzeri stays busy teaching about 300 students each semester. Beyond his passion for teaching, Strazzeri discovered two new interests in recent years: running and biking. This hobby is now his major mode of transportation, as well: commuting to Mason by bike has offered Strazzeri motivation and an opportunity to improve as an athlete.

PhD student Zhenyi Huang will embark on his COVES Fellowship this summer, applying his statistics expertise to help foster relationships between engineering and the Virginia state government.

A biostatistics graduate student spearheaded a weather station installation, to monitor the cherry trees at Mason Pond and study climate change.

Last year, students at ÑÇÖÞAV joined contestants from around the world to predict the peak bloom date of cherry trees at  four global locations. The international Cherry Blossom Prediction Competition was a huge success and is gaining traction during its second annual run. 

Mason statistics students joined citizen scientists from around the world to hedge their bets in the competition and predict peak cherry blossom bloom dates in four locations—Washington, D.C., Kyoto, Japan, Vancouver, Canada, and Liestal-Weideli, Switzerland.  

The American Statistical Association (ASA) Census Quality Indicators Taskforce selected assistant professor of statistics Jonathan Auerbach to independently review the 2020 census as part of a three-person research team. Ironically the major finding was what they didn't find -- evidence of malfeasance or wrongdoing.

The Department of Statistics is poised for major growth with new leadership, new hires, and new alliances. These include not only the regular statistics hires but also the Tech Talent Investment Pipeline, a cluster hire in computational systems biomedicine, potential joint positions with other departments, and organizational collaborations.

Inova Children’s Hospital, the Virginia Department of Health, and Mason Engineering joined forces last summer to conduct a COVID-19 antibody study to analyze the incidence of COVID-19 in Northern Virginia’s children.

Four seniors majoring in statistics––Emily Litzenberg, Kate Lang, Nate Mulugeta, and Shannon Connor––received an honorable mention for the best use of external data at the American Statistical Association’s (ASA) Fall Data Challenge 2020.