Featuring news about Terry Speed, Bob Blumenthal and David Findley

Terry Speed receives Australia’s Victoria Prize for Science and Innovation

Terry Speed, who is well-known to readers of the IMS Bulletin, is a world leader in bioinformatics. He has been recognized for his pioneering work by the awarding of Australia’s $50,000 Victoria Prize for Science and Innovation for Life Sciences.

Professor Terry Speed is head of the Bioinformatics Division of the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI). Originally trained in mathematics and statistics, he has had a lifelong interest in genetics. Together with his students and colleagues, Terry has developed methods of analysis now in daily use in research laboratories worldwide underpinning many of the recent advances in medical research. This work has helped to identify areas of the human genome that contribute to cancer, genes that are vital for embryonic development and pinpointing malaria proteins responsible for initiating infection in human red blood cells. He is a Fellow of IMS and the Australian Academy of Science, was awarded the NHMRC Achievement Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research in 2007 and an Australian Fellowship in 2009. Most recently he was presented with the 2012 Thomson Reuter’s Citation Award. According to his colleagues, he is a living Australian treasure. Terry’s column [“n vs n-1”] is here.

Bob Blumenthal: 1931–2012

From The Seattle Times, November 15–18, 2012 Obituaries:
“Robert M. Blumenthal, born February 7, 1931 in Evanston IL, passed away peacefully on November 8, at the age of 81, after several years of dementia. Bob was an accomplished violinist in high school before focusing on tennis, captaining his college tennis team, and winning the Ohio Conference singles title. He graduated from Oberlin in 1952 with a BA in Mathematics, married Sarah Whelpton, and began doctoral studies at Cornell. Upon receiving his PhD in 1956, Bob accepted a position with the UW Math Department, where he was active in researching, teaching and mentoring until his retirement in 1997.”

Bob Blumenthal was an IMS Fellow. An obituary is being written and will be published here soon.

Festschrift for David Findley’s work

The career and contributions of David Findley, former Senior Mathematical Statistician for Time Series Methods at the US Census Bureau, have been honored with a Festschrift. Economic Time Series: Modeling and Seasonality, edited by William Bell, Scott Holan and Tucker McElroy is published by Chapman Hall/CRC Press, with papers by forty-three contributors from fourteen countries. McElroy and Holan’s “A Conversation with David Findley” is forthcoming in Statistical Science.