Manski, STT doctoral student, wins first place at Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture and Natural Resources

Congratulations to PhD candidate Sarah Manski for winning first place for her oral presentation at the 2022 Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture and Natural Resources in May at Utah State University in Logan, Utah.

Manski presented her research Bayesian Analysis of Agricultural Risk Mitigation Via Adoption of Regenerative Soil Health Practices on May 18, which shows extensive modeling process due to the complexity of the agricultural data, as well as some preliminary Bayesian results in Illinois showing that having higher rotational diversity in crops is associated with a decrease in risk of low crop yields, especially in dry conditions.

"I'm super proud of Ms. Manski for the work she did that led to her presentation at this national conference, and of course for her winning out over the strong competition there in grad student oral presentations,” said Dr. Frederi Viens, STT Professor.  “What I've learned about Ms. Manski through a couple of years of working with her on these agro-ecology applied stat topics is that she always under-estimates her skills and talent. Goodness knows that many others do the opposite. The topic she was presenting is very complex. It involves being aware of domain knowledge areas in agro-ecology, retail agricultural banking, and federal farm-risk policy. We can all be impressed with her performance. I was not surprised by the news that she had won first place."

“Attending the conference and speaking was an incredible learning and networking experience where I was fully immersed in the agricultural statistics community,” Manski said. “I appreciate my advisor, Dr. Viens, for encouraging me to attend this great conference and all the colleagues there who welcomed myself and many other young scholars into their community and supported our work through the student presentation and poster competition.  I look forward to attending this conference in 2023 at Purdue University and presenting the continued progress of my agricultural work.” 

The Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture and Natural Resources brings together statisticians and researchers from academia, industry, and government to discuss ideas and advancements in the application of statistics to solve agricultural and biological problems. https://caas.usu.edu/agstats2022/