Jana Asher

Jana Lynn Asher is a statistician known for her work on human rights and sexual violence. With David L. Banks and Fritz Scheuren, she is an editor of the book Statistical Methods for Human Rights (Springer, 2008), and she is a member of the Committee on International Relations of the American Statistical Association for the term 2019–2021.

Asher majored in anthropology and Japanese studies at Wellesley College, graduating in 1991. She earned a master's degree in statistics from Carnegie Mellon University in 1999, and returned to Carnegie Mellon University for her doctoral studies, completing her Ph.D. in 2016. Her dissertation, Methodological Innovations in the Collection and Analysis of Human Rights Violations Data, was supervised by Stephen Fienberg.

Asher was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2009 "for excellence in the application of statistical methodology to human rights and humanitarian measurement problems; for leadership toward placing human rights violations research on a sound statistical basis; and for service to the profession". In 2010 she became an elected member of the International Statistical Institute.