We’re deeply saddened to announce the passing of Don Ylvisaker. Don was instrumental in establishing the Department of Statistics and was a great friend, mentor, and colleague to many of us. We are preparing a special In Memoriam page as well as a full obituary to honor Don’s lasting contributions to our community, which we hope to share with you very soon.

Don is preceded in death by his son Peter, and sisters Mary and Sylvia. He is survived by his wife Anna (Ricci), sisters Elisabeth and Shirley, as well as many nieces, nephews and cousins.

The family would like donations in Don’s memory to be made to VNA Health at 509 E. Montecito Street, Suite 200, Santa Barbara, CA 93103.

More details are available here.

Statistica Sinica featured their latest special issue on sliced inverse regression (SIR) to honor Ker-Chau Li for his ground-breaking contributions to dimension-reduction techniques in high-dimensional statistics. Over his career Professor Li also made substantial contributions in mathematics / computational statistics, high-dimensional data analysis, bioinformatics, systems biology, and applied research. Li served as a Co-editor of Statistica Sinica, 1999-2002, and as the Director of the Institute of Statistical Science, Academia Sinica, 2006-2012. He was elected as Academician of Academia Sinica in 2012, and subsequently as a member to the World Academy of Sciences in 2014. He was also the founder of the Mathematics in Biology Lab at the Institute of Statistical Science, Academia Sinica. The special issue is available here.

Please congratulate Kerchau when you next see him.

Guido has joint appointments in the Department of Statistics and the Department of Mathematics. His research focuses on the theoretical analysis of machine learning and artificial intelligence. His work provides insight into why these methods work so well, rather than the engineering of more refined methods. He was the recipient of the 2022 Sloan Research Fellowship and a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation.

There are few things more important to a department than the development and promotion of junior faculty.

Congratulations to Guido for his tenure promotion!