Pantula To Lead NSF Division

Dr. Sastry Pantula, professor and head of the statistics department, has been named director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Mathematical Sciences.

Pantula, a faculty member since 1982, will be “on loan” from NC State when he begins serving in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate at NSF on Sept. 13. While he will step down as department head, he will continue to be a tenured faculty member.

Pantula is the president of the American Statistical Association and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As director of graduate programs, Pantula expanded relationships with companies such as Eli Lilly, Becton Dickinson, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and SAS to increase number of quality training opportunities for statistics graduate students. His research interests range from applications of statistical methods to derivation of asymptotic theory. He has authored numerous publications and the textbook Applied Regression Analysis: A Research Tool.