Jonathan Mummolo, associate professor of politics and public affairs, was part of a team that won the Society for Political Methodology’s Best Statistical Software Award. The honor recognizes individuals for developing statistical software that makes a significant research contribution. Interflex, developed by Mummolo, Jens Hainmueller, Jiehan Liu, Licheng Liu, Ziyi Liu, Tianzhu Qin, and Yiqing Xu, helps researchers flexibly test conditional hypotheses.

“Social science research is replete with conditional hypotheses: We often believe that one variable affects another, but that the effect varies depending on the presence of some third factor,” Mummolo said. “Unfortunately, leading statistical tools for testing such assertions rely on rigid assumptions that can lead to faulty inferences. Interflex is a statistical software package that allows researchers to easily relax those assumptions and investigate conditional hypotheses using simple but robust approaches. My coauthors and I are so pleased to see these tools in frequent use in published work and are grateful to the Society for Political Methodology for this recognition.”

G. John Ikenberry, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs, will be the guest editor for the 2025 edition of Great Decisions, the flagship publication of the Foreign Policy Association. Great Decisions reaches an audience of approximately 400,000 readers across the United States.

“Since 1954, the American Foreign Policy Association has annually published a Great Decisions volume that brings leading scholars together to outline major challenges facing the United States in world affairs,” Ikenberry said. “This year, they have asked me to edit Great Decisions and write the opening essay. The work brings together well-known scholars to discuss a wide range of pressing issues: trade conflict and the world economy, NATO and security cooperation in Europe, relations with China, the rise of India as a major actor, climate change, and AI and emerging technologies.”

Ikenberry was also named chair of the External Advisory Council by the National Intelligence Council (NIC). In this capacity, Ikenberry will oversee efforts that provide information and advice to the NIC on a wide range of regional and functional issues.

“I am thrilled to be helping the NIC organize its engagement with outside university experts on pressing issues of national and international security,” he said.