Virginia Tech Hosts 2025 ASA Virginia Chapter Annual Meeting

The Department of Statistics at Virginia Tech hosted the 2025 ASA Virginia Chapter Annual Meeting, which brought together more than 80 participants from across the Commonwealth. In addition to strong representation from Virginia Tech, students and faculty members from Old Dominion University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the University of Virginia also attended. The program featured six oral presentations, thirty-one posters, and a keynote lecture by Dr. Lily Wang of George Mason University, titled “From Synthesis to Trust: Advanced Statistical Methods for Trustworthy Generative AI in Biomedical Imaging Studies.”

The meeting was organized by Professors Pang Du, Jyotishka Datta, and Xin Xing, with vital assistance from graduate student volunteers and departmental staff. The poster event was coordinated in collaboration with corporate partners, and special thanks are extended to Dr. Stephanie DeHart for serving as liaison, and the American Statistical Association for providing a stimulus of 1000 USD. 

Student Awards

The meeting concluded with recognition of the 2025 student poster award recipients. 

  1. Parul Patil, VT, Vecchia Approximated Bayesian Heteroskedastic Gaussian Processes (first place) 

  2. Obed Amo, ODU, A Graph-Fused LASSO Regression Technique for Analyzing Real Estate Markets with Spatial Heterogeneity Effects (first place)

  3. Stephen Barnett, VT, Deep Gaussian Process Poisson Modeling of Large-Scale Satellite Count Data for Computer Model Calibration (second place)

  4. Hyunjae CHO UVA, Methods for addressing confounding in the presence of semi-competing risks for CER analysis using multilevel observational data (second place)

  5. Lillian Dorathy, UVA, Anatomical Position and Seat Belt Fit of Pregnant Automobile Occupants: An Exploratory Study (third place)

  6. Samuel Soon, VCU, Parameter Estimation and Influence Analysis in Matrix Variate Non-Gaussian Models (third place)

JP Morgan and Dayanand Naik

Finally, Prof. J. P. Morgan received the Dayanand Naik Award, the most prestigious honor of the Virginia Chapter of the ASA, for his outstanding contributions to statistics and related fields. The award recognizes individuals whose research excellence and dedicated service have significantly advanced statistics and its applications across the Commonwealth of Virginia.