This episode of The Random Sample introduces you to three brilliant statisticians! The three have been selected to present the inaugural Horizon Lectures at the upcoming Australian Statistical Conference next month. The Statistical Society of Australia established the Horizon Lecture awards for this year’s conference to recognise emerging leaders in Australia’s statistics community, and their contributions to advancing statistical practice. The three awardees are Dr Marijke Welvaert with the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, Assoc. Professor Andrew Zammit Mangion from the University of Wollongong, and Assoc. Prof Margarita Moreno-Betancur with the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. It’s a fascinating discussion about the importance of statisticians, the communication of statistics, and how statistics is evolving with the emergence of data science, machine learning and AI. Our host for this episode is Dr Sevvandi Kandanaarachchi, a Senior Research Scientist with CSIRO.