The Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies announced its awards, presented at its annual ceremony at JSM in Miami Beach on August 3 by COPSS president Xihong Lin.

The winner of the President’s Award is Nilanjan Chatterjee of the National Cancer Institute, USA: “For outstanding contributions to the statistical sciences by ingenious methodological research with applications in epidemiology and genetics, including studies of gene-environment interactions, disease heterogeneity and genome-wide association studies; for fundamental contributions to the theory of case-control studies and complex retrospective sampling designs; for demonstrating leadership and a vision as a statistical scientist by actively collaborating in wide-ranging studies of cancer epidemiology and genetics and concurrently maintaining a vigorous methodological research program closely tied to cutting edge scientific issues; for exceptional mentoring and service to the profession and to the National Cancer Institute.” Unusually, Nilanjan was also selected to receive the Snedecor award, for his contribution to biometric research and also recognized for the 2009 JASA paper, co-authored with Y.H. Chen and R.J. Carroll, “Shrinkage Estimators for Robust and Efficient Inference in Haplotype-Based Case-Control Studies.”

The F.N. David award winner for 2011 is Marie Davidian, North Carolina State University: “For important contributions to the development of methods for analyzing data from longitudinal studies and clinical trials, and for outstanding leadership and dedication to the statistical profession.” As previously announced, the 2011 Fisher Lecturer was C.F Jeff Wu of Georgia Institute of Technology. His lecture was titled “Post-Fisherian Experimentation: from Physical to Virtual.”

We’ll bring you photos and an interview with the Presidents’ Award winner by Bhramar Mukherjee, COPSS secretary, in the October/November issue.

The call for nominations for next year’s awards is at http://www.niss.org/copss.