Indian American professor Murali Haran named editor-in-chief of international statistics journal

PENNSYLVANIA (TIP) : Murali Haran, an Indian American professor at Penn State University, has been named editor-in-chief of the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics (JABES) for a three-year term starting in 2026.
A professor of statistics in Eberly College of Science, much of Haran’s research is motivated by problems in environmental science and disease modeling, according to a university release. Haran joined the faculty at Penn State in 2004 and served as the head of the Department of Statistics between 2018 and 2024.
“I am honored to take on this role,” Haran said. “This is a time when biology, agriculture, and the environmental sciences are being transformed by powerful statistical, machine learning and AI methods, as well as interesting new kinds of data that are available to scientists. It will be exciting to learn about the new questions and statistical ideas emerging in these fields over the next three years.”
JABES is published jointly by the American Statistical Association, the world’s largest professional organization for statisticians, and the International Biometric Society, a professional and academic society promoting statistical and mathematical theory and methods in the biosciences.
JABES is dedicated to introducing new statistical methods to solve challenging problems in the agricultural, biological, and environmental sciences. The journal is international in both its authors and readership, with previous editors-in-chief representing five different continents.
With collaborators in the Department of Geosciences and the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State, Haran has also studied the Antarctic Ice Sheet and the transmission of infectious diseases, respectively.
In addition to interdisciplinary research, he has worked extensively on fast computer algorithms for solving statistical problems and on methods for analyzing” spatial data” — observations that have locations associated with them.
He has published in both scientific journals and statistical methodology journals, with his research recognized with the 2015 El-Shaarawi Young Researchers Award from the International Environmetrics Society.
His research interests are in Monte Carlo algorithms, statistical analysis of complex computer models, models for spatial data, and interdisciplinary research in climate science and infectious disease modeling.
His methodological contributions include developing Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms for spatial models and intractable normalizing function problems, methods for the analysis of high-dimensional non-Gaussian spatial data, and uncertainty quantification for simulation models with high-dimensional outputs.
His scientific contributions include studying the future of the Antarctic ice sheet, the use of hydrology models for studying flood hazards, understanding the impact of vaccinations and the environment on the spread of infectious diseases, and estimating infectious disease burden (cases) based on multiple imperfect data sources.
Haran has a PhD in Statistics from the University of Minnesota, and a B.S. in Computer Science (with minors in Statistics, Mathematics and Film Studies) from Carnegie Mellon University.