It is with our deepest sorrow that we inform you that Joseph M. Hilbe, president and founder of our association, passed away this Sunday, March 12nd, 2017. We lost a great and inspirational man, and a friend. He worked with excitement and love until his last moments.

Joseph (December 30, 1944 - March 12, 2017) was an American statistician and philosopher, founding President of the International Astrostatistics Association, Chief Editor of Springer Astrostatistics book series, and one of the most prolific authors of books on statistical modeling in the early twenty-first century. He made a number of contributions to the fields of count response models and logistic regression. Among his most influential books are two editions of Negative Binomial Regression (Cambridge University Press, 2007, 2011), Modeling Count Data (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and Logistic Regression Models (Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2009).

Joseph always had great love and energy for statistics, and astrostatistics in particular. Without his drive and enthusiasm to bring the statistics and astronomy communities together, the IAA would not exist today. He worked with tireless energy to strengthen the IAA and raise its profile, and to support young astrostatisticians. His unique gifts will be deeply missed. He is survived by his loving wife Cheryl, his children and grandchildren.