Nell Sedransk is an American statistician and academic who has made significant contributions to the fields of Bayesian inference and experimental design. Over her distinguished career, she has held major leadership and research roles, including serving as the director of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) from 2015 to 2017. She continues her association with NISS while also serving as a research professor of statistics at North Carolina State University.\n\nSedransk completed her doctoral studies at Iowa State University, earning her Ph.D. in 1969 with a dissertation focused on discriminant analysis. Before her tenure at NISS, which began in 2005, she taught as a professor of statistics at Case Western Reserve University. In 2000, she transitioned to public service, becoming the Chief of the Statistical Engineering Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.\n\nThroughout her career, Sedransk's research has spanned complex experimental designs and practical applications, including contributing to interdisciplinary studies such as reading comprehension. Her professional achievements have been recognized globally; she was elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2002 and is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. Her husband, Joseph Sedransk, is also a fellow of the American Statistical Association, having received the honor in 1981.
