Edsel Peña has reached a high point in his nearly 40-year career. The professor in USC’s Department of Statistics has been named a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), one of the biggest honors for a statistician.
With this IMS Fellowship, Peña says he has achieved the “trifecta” in his field, since he is also an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI). He and the other IMS fellows will be honored this summer at the Bernoulli/IMS World Congress in Probability and Statistics in Bochum, Germany.
For Peña, who is a Filipino-American, the recognition comes with an important distinction.
“This is the first year that the IMS has selected a Philippine-born fellow, and in fact there are two of us – with my colleague Hernando Ombao in Saudi Arabia – so we have cracked a glass ceiling for Philippine-born statisticians” he says.
“When I was growing up, this kind of opportunity was not even in my dreams. I would have never thought this kind of recognition was possible for me as a Filipino, and I hope this will inspire others from the Philippines to persevere and to aim high.”
Peña was born on the small island of Catanduanes. He remembers that his village had no electricity during his earliest years of school. One of nine children, he learned about the importance of education from his parents.
Peña excelled in mathematics and was able to successfully test and get admitted into the Philippine Science High School in Manila. He moved away from home to study when he was just twelve years old.
This is the first year that the IMS has selected a Philippine-born fellow, and in fact there are two of us – with my colleague Hernando Ombao in Saudi Arabia – so we have cracked a glass ceiling for Philippine-born statisticians.
“Getting into that school changed the trajectory of my life,” he says. “Many of the students came from wealthy families in Manila, so at first, I felt like I did not belong. But I worked hard and believed in myself and found that I was also capable of just as much as any of the other students.”
His hard work opened the door for him to receive scholarships to earn his bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of the Philippines at Los Baños. Peña later moved to the U.S. to earn another master’s and a doctoral degree at Florida State University. After 15 years on faculty at Bowling Green State University, Peña came to USC in 2000.
Now, he has been selected to become the next chair of USC’s statistics department and will begin his new role in July. As someone who emigrated to the U.S. for graduate school, Peña says he would like to establish pipelines for excellent international students to come to USC’s statistics program.
He’ll start with his own alma mater. This summer, Peña will travel to the University of the Philippines at Los Baños to receive the Severino and Paz Koh Lectureship Award in Science from the Philippine-American Academy of Science and Engineering (PAASE), which recognizes the outstanding contributions of Filipino and Filipino-American researchers.
As the Koh awardee in science, Peña will deliver a lecture to an audience of PAASE members and Filipino students.
Peña says he hopes the students in Los Baños will be inspired to see where statistics can take them in their education and careers. Perhaps some will consider USC’s statistics program. Most of all, he hopes to instill the importance of finding joy in what you do.
“I’ve gone far in my career, and the recognition is great, but the most rewarding thing to me is to enjoy what you are doing in your work, and to do it as well as you can. The awards are just the icing on the cake,” he says.