We are delighted that our Director, Professor Sylvia Richardson CBE, is the new President of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS).

Sylvia was chosen from a list of nominees put forward by RSS fellows to the Society’s President Nominating Committee and recommended to Council, which endorsed the nomination at the end of March 2019.

An RSS fellow since 1979, Sylvia was a member of the Research Section from 1995 to 1998, member of Council from 1998 to 2002, as well as Chair of the Publication Review working party, in particular helping to launch our flagship magazine, Significance. She was Honorary Secretary, Theme Director for Publication and member of the Executive council from 2003 to 2006. She has also been a recipient of the RSS Guy medal in silver. In 2020, following the COVID-19 outbreak, Sylvia founded and is co‐chair of the RSS Covid‐19 Task Force, which engages a network of RSS members who are active on Covid-19 and are experts in diverse aspects of applied probability and statistics.

Sylvia’s presidency began this month. She is the fifth woman to become president in the society’s 185-year history. Sylvia is passionate about the importance of advancing the statistical discipline and of promoting good statistical understanding, and is excited to be taking on the role of president, saying:

“I am honoured to be following in the footsteps of other distinguished statisticians in taking up this role and will do my best in these extremely challenging times to promote that good data and good statistical practise will help society in its fight to control the virus”