Scotland Leman awarded Jean Dickinson Gibbons Faculty Fellowship in Statistics

Scotland Leman, associate professor of statistics, has been awarded a Jean Dickinson Gibbons Faculty Fellowship in Statistics by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The Jean Dickinson Gibbons Faculty Fellowship in Statistics was established in 2023 with a gift from its namesake to enhance the national and international prominence of Virginia Tech’s Department of Statistics. Gibbons, who earned her Ph.D. in statistics from Virginia Tech, established this fellowship to support the teaching, service, and research of a faculty member within the statistics department.

A faculty member since 2007, Leman has served as the director of the department’s graduate program since 2019. His research has attracted over $25 million in grants, with over $4 million in attributed funding. His work on basketball rankings gained significant media attention, and his research on prediction of civil unrest led to several publications and recognition from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Leman has taught at the graduate and undergraduate levels and he was essential in developing curricula and courses for the Computational Modeling and Data Analytics program. He also introduced three new graduate level courses, enhancing and modernizing the department’s curriculum.

Leman earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Davis and a master’s degree from Stanford University as well as a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Duke University.