Alyson G. Wilson

Army Wilks Memorial Award – The Lore

Presented by Barry Bodt on October 22, 2015

  • Wilks, whose idea it was for this conference.
  • The conference began in 1955 and ran for 40 years as the Conference on the Design of Experiments in Army Research, Development, and Testing.
  • In 1995 we began a new era as the Army Conference on Applied Statistics.
  • We changed the name again, first to ICAS and then to CASD in 2013 reflecting a larger defense/homeland security view.
  • Back to Wilks and the origin of the award.
  • Wealthy southern industrialist, Phil Rust.
  • Train ride Rust with Sam Wilks.
  • Wilks/Rust association, interest in Army, interest in ballistics.
  • Wilks passing 1964.
  • Rust award money contribution to honor his friend, Sam Wilks.
  • Army Wilks Medal
  • First few awardees: Frank Grubbs, John Tukey, Leslie Simon, Bill Cochran
  • Fast forward to around 1980 and differences between the ASA and the Army on the purpose and direction of the award.
  • Award splits in 1981, with Bob Bechhofer, Cornell University, as the first awardee
  • Today, the award is given for someone who has made a significant contribution to statistical research and application to the Army and the greater defense communities.
  • We try to honor Philip Rust’s wish that to honor Sam Wilks, the contributions of the individual should be ''bristling with bayonets.''
  • The award is given, when we have a deserving candidate. We do skip some years.
  • But, today, we will be giving the award for the 29th time.
  • At this time I would like to acknowledge the past winners in attendance at this conference -- Ed Wegman, Art Fries, and Barry Bodt -- prior to making this year’s presentation.

Army Wilks Medal—2015 Recipient

  • After her undergraduate work at Rice and MS at Carnegie Mellon, our winner spent a couple years at the National Institute of Health.
  • Then it was off to a Ph.D. from Duke and a new job at Cowboy Programming Resources and the beginning of her service to our national defense.
  • I actually met her first when she was still with Cowboy Programming Resources. She attended ACAS in 1998 when we held it at New Mexico State. That was in her backyard at the time and Nozer Singpurwalla was offering the tutorial on Bayesian Methods. I remember she had a number of very good questions for Nozer and he did take note—in part that anyone in the community at the time would be genuinely interested in the Bayesian approach.
  • From there she went to Los Alamos National Labs and focused on DoD and DoE work, with a great deal of her effort in reliability for places such as the Missile Defense Agency.
  • It was only two years later, when she brought it seemed like the entire statistics staff at LANL to ACAS at Rice University to offer a tutorial on Data, Knowledge, and Information Integration to Support Decision Making.
  • The year after, the conference traveled back to New Mexico, this time in Santa Fe with LANL hosting and she taking the lead role.
  • With that beginning, she has been a long friend of the conference, serving on the program committee and contributing freely her time, contacts with speakers, etc. She actually chaired the conference just last year.
  • But that’s just part of her contribution. She has a great reputation as a mentor of statisticians, many of whom have ended up in defense-related positions.
  • She has been active in the ASA, and was one of the driving forces in the founding of the ASA Section on Statistics in Defense and National Security, holding numerous offices since its inception.
  • She has maintained high energy furthering the role of statistics as she moved from her early positions to then Iowa State, IDA, and now at NC State.
  • Although service has been an integral part of her contribution, this year’s winner has made substantive contributions to statistics, especially in modern reliability.
  • She co-authored a book in Bayesian Reliability and has over 35 peer-reviewed papers.
  • She has served on 8 National Academy of Sciences committees on topics of interest to the defense community, for example, body armor and operational testing.
  • She has been recognized by the DoE 3 times with Awards of Excellence.
  • She is a fellow of the ASA.
  • I close with the final paragraph of her nomination letter. ''It is without reservation that we vigorously support the nomination of XXX for the U.S. Army Wilks Award. Her vast and profound contributions to statistical methodology, her broad impact on the practice of statistics in defense applications, and her tireless service to the defense community make her the ideal nominee for this award. We can think of no one more deserving of receiving this year’s award. She will be a worthy winner and role model as the first woman to be awarded the U.S. Army Wilks Award.'' Signed by Drs. Christine Anderson-Cook and Michael Hamada.
  • The Wilks committee whole-heartedly agrees.
  • At this time I would like to invite the 2015 U.S. Army Wilks Medal Award winner, Dr. Alyson Wilson, to come forward and receive her award.