This editor profile is the sixthteenth in a series which will introduce you to a selection of our editors.
This week we have an interview with Narayanaswamy Balakrishnan, Executive-Editor of The Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference.

Why did you choose statistics as your field of study?
I wanted to study Tamil literature but was told that it wasn’t going to get me a job! So I decided I was going to study mathematics instead, until I found out that the mathematics department had no place for me that year. I ended up studying statistics because it was a close alternative to mathematics.

What’s new in the field of statistics? How will this work impact our daily lives?
We are looking at new methods of analyzing data from clinical trials. We are essentially using statistics to develop models that can accurately predict how medical treatments will work, what the effects will be, and how things like age and gender affect them. Suppose someone gets hip replacement surgery, we can use statistics to look at how long they will take to recover depending on factors such as their age. Statistically, we know that someone in their forties will recover faster than someone in their seventies but what we would like to do is go further and link recovery time to factors like race, gender, smoking, high blood pressure, weight etc. Cancer treatment is an area where we are doing a lot of work at the moment, to determine the effectiveness of cancer treatments, as well as recovery time and lifespan after treatment. These are all things that can have a real impact on people’s lives.

What gets you up in the morning?
Diving into a research project that will jog your brain and working on topics like survival analysis and human lifespan. I enjoy doing research and in fact, it gets more interesting the older you get because you get more mature, you have more tools at your disposal and you can do more interesting things. Unfortunately, as you get older, you also join more committees and boards which cut into your time to do research. 

What aspect of being an editor do you find most rewarding?
It is extremely gratifying to see different aspects of research, both old and new before it becomes known to the outside world. Being an editor helps me stay on top of things in my field of research.

What do you like to do for fun?
I keep a diary where I write my poetry and I constantly listen to classical music. I always have classical music playing in the background, whatever I am doing.

What is your favorite quote?
``Hard work pays.’’ A lot of people think because they are smart, they can do anything but intelligence alone is not sufficient, one has to bring time and dedication to work in order to accomplish and achieve things.

What is the biggest lesson you've learned in your career?
Whatever you undertake you should try to do it the best way you can. I am amazed every time I get a manuscript with typographical errors even in the very title. People are under time pressure and so in the urge to finish papers quickly, they become sloppy. You don’t have to be perfect, but you should always aspire to do things as well as you possibly can.

What are you currently reading? Would you recommend it? If so, why?
I am reading a book about an Indian mathematician named Srinivasa Ramanujan, who is considered to be one of the brilliant mathematicians of the last century. With no formal mathematical training, he turned out to be a genius in number theory.  While Indian mathematicians did not recognize his genius at that time, a British mathematician named Godfrey Harold Hardyrecognized his genius and brought him to England to publish his theories. Ramanujan died at a young age but left an indelible mark. His biography is a very moving story about someone from a poor family, with no training, who turned out to be a natural genius and influenced the mathematical world during a very short lifespan.

Who or what is your biggest inspiration?
I come from the same place in India as Srinivasa Ramanujan, and in my school the teachers always talked about his life and works, so he has always been a source of inspiration and great pride for me. The field of statistics is a field where a number of Indians have made a significant impact and that too has inspired me.

What would you like your legacy to be?
Not just to leave behind a legacy as a statistician, but to contribute to society and the field in general. I have created many fellowships and scholarships because I want to contribute to the profession by encouraging young students and providing opportunities for them to achieve their own goals and aspirations.

Can you describe how it feels when you come across a groundbreaking paper?
It doesn’t happen that often but when it does, you know it immediately. To be honest though, statistics is a field where things unfold at a slower pace. Sometimes it takes 10 years before you can see the impact of a particular research paper.

What advice would you give to a new editor? What are the challenges?
The most challenging aspect of being an editor is resolving direct and indirect conflicts between authors and reviewers. It is part of my job as an editor, to strike a balance between the interests of authors and the evaluation of the work by the editorial board members while keeping the quality and focus of the journal in mind.

How do you balance your role as editor with your other roles of teacher, mentor and researcher?
It’s hard because academic institutions in general do not value editorial responsibilities enough. That said, what motivates me to keep editing, is the feeling that I am on the fringe of modern developments in the field of statistics, and that I am making a genuine contribution to the statistical profession.

What would you change about your role as editor or the scientific journal publishing industry if you could?
I would like editors to play a more active role in discussion forums. I would like to see more discussions that would capture the opinions and findings of experts from different disciplines. These multi-disciplinary discussions about issues like global warming and rising oil prices could then be put through a strict review process, much as a traditional research paper, and published in journals. By having a statistician, a chemist, a physicist, an economist and a policy-maker, for example, all look at the same problem, at the same time, in an online environment, you can greatly speed up academic discussion on timely issues and problems that will be of interest to the community at large.