ENBIS, the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics, established three awards to honour individuals who have helped to broaden the use of statistics in business and industry. Among these is the Box Medal, awarded for outstanding contributions to business and industrial statistics. It is named after George Box, the first recipient of the medal. The 2016 ENBIS Box Medal is awarded to David Hand.

David Hand

Professor David Hand is Senior Research Investigator and Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College, London, where he formerly held the Chair in Statistics. He is also Chief Scientific Advisor to Winton Capital Management. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries, and has served twice as President of the Royal Statistical Society. He is a non-executive director of the UK Statistics Authority, and is Chair of the Board of the UK Administrative Data Research Network.

David is one of the IMS Bulletin Contributing Editors. He has published 300 scientific papers and 28 books, including Principles of Data Mining, Information Generation, Measurement Theory and Practice, The Improbability Principle, and The Wellbeing of Nations. In 2002 David was awarded the Guy Medal of the Royal Statistical Society, and in 2012 he and his research group won the Credit Collections and Risk Award for Contributions to the Credit Industry. In 2013 he was made OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for services to research and innovation.

ENBIS described David as “an ambassador of statistics; some of his books and articles have addressed important societal problems, with the merit of being accessible not only to specialists but also to the general reader.”