Alexander "Sasha" Rakhlin, PhD ’06, the Distinguished Professor in Data, Systems, and Society at the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS); a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT; and a principal investigator in the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) has been named the next director of the MIT Statistics and Data Science Center (SDSC). Rakhlin succeeds Ankur Moitra, the Norbert Wiener Professor of Mathematics, associate director of the IDSS, and a faculty member in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) who has been SDSC director since 2021. "I am honored to take on this role," says Rakhlin. "The strength of the Statistics and Data Science Center has always been its people — students, postdocs, and faculty from across MIT who bring sharply different perspectives to the most interesting problems of the day in statistics, machine learning, and AI. My goal is to support that community as it takes on the constantly evolving questions reshaping the field." Blogger's Review: Rakhlin's appointment is an important step for the MIT Statistics and Data Science Center, and he will bring new perspectives and momentum to the center's development. His research background and teaching experience will help the center achieve greater success in the fields of statistics and machine learning.