The Department successfully held the conference "The Past, Present and Future of Statistics in the Era of AI" on May 8-10, 2025 in celebration of the Department’s 90th anniversary. The conference program featured two short courses, two plenary talks, multiple distinguished alumni lectures, a poster session, and lively panel discussions.
Over 100 participants attended the conference, including established researchers, emerging scholars, and industry professionals–alongside the department’s donors, friends, alumni, students, and current and former faculty from all over the world. The conference highlighted strong demand and enthusiasm across academia and industry for high-quality gatherings focused on pressing statistical challenges and opportunities in the AI era.
The conference also demonstrated the Department’s remarkable history of research education as well as significant contributions to the field of statistics and other disciplines. The foundational and pioneering works by the Statistics faculty and alumni have long-lasting influence on the modern AI developments (e.g., the Kullack-Leibler divergence) and human health (e.g., the Gail model, the Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool; adaptive clinical trial design) among others.
President Ellen Granberg and Deputy Provost Teresa Murphy also attended the main conference and gave warm opening remarks. Ninety years ago, GW established the first Department of Statistics in the United States to be housed within a college of arts and sciences. President Granberg called “that decision was visionary” and “GW made history”. She also recognized that “statistics is not just a technical field, but one essential to understanding the most complex challenges facing society.” In the era of AI, Statistics, as the oldest and most established field for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data, will play unprecedented roles since “while AI may dazzle with its speed and scale, data provides the deep foundation upon which those dazzling AI systems are built.” Deputy Provost Murphy reported to the audience the progress of the Department’s 3+1+1 programs, a new and exciting mode of education and collaboration of the Department.
At the end of her speech, President Granberg said “for the GW Department of Statistics team, I can’t wait to see what the next 90 years will bring!” We, the Statistics Department, also look forward to the next thriving 90 years!
See the conference website here: https://statistics.columbian.gwu.edu/gw-stat-90
