The Institute of Mathematics (IMS) recently named University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Statistics-PhD alumni, Dr. Judy Huixia Wang, as one of the 2022 IMS Medallion Lectures. The IMS Committee on Special Lectures invites eight individuals to deliver Medallion Lectures annually. Medallion Lectures are distinct from Invited Papers, which are chosen by the various Program Committees for specific meetings. Each Medallion Lecturer will receive a Medallion in a brief ceremony preceding the lecture. The IMS gives awards to recognize individuals who have excelled in a number of ways. Award winners are regarded as role models and leaders, so it is important that the award selection process recognize the achievements of a diverse group that reflects the breadth of membership of the IMS and of the profession.

Judy Huixia Wang received her PhD in Statistics from University of Illinois in 2006. She was a faculty member in the Department of Statistics at North Carolina State University from 2006 to 2014. She is currently Professor in the Department of Statistics at the George Washington University. She received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation and the Tweedie New Researcher Award from Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2012. In 2018, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Since 2018, she has been serving as a Program Director in the Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) of National Science Foundation, managing disciplinary programs in DMS as well as a number of interdisciplinary programs that are cross-directorate and cross-agency. Her research interests include quantile regression, semiparametric and nonparametric regression, high dimensional inference, extreme value analysis, spatial analysis, and etc. 

Dr. Wang's dissertation, Inference on Quantile Regression for Mixed Models with Applications to GeneChip Data, was supervised by Professor Xuming He while in the Statistics-PhD program.