COPSS Snedecor, Fisher and David Awards announced

The Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) sponsors and presents the following awards at JSM Denver this year. The 2019 George W. Snedecor Award will be given to Sudipto Banerjee, University of California, Los Angeles, for groundbreaking and fundamental work on Bayesian hierarchical modeling and the analysis of large spatial datasets; for significant contributions to the mapping of disease incidence in space and time, and the analysis of environmental exposures. The Snedecor Award, established in 1976 and given biennially (odd years) since 1991, honors an individual who was instrumental in the development of statistical theory in biometry. The award is for a noteworthy publication in biometry in the past three years.

The 2019 Fisher Lecture will be delivered at JSM by Paul R. Rosenbaum, University of Pennsylvania. Paul was selected for his pioneering contributions to statistical methodology for observational studies, important applications of such methodology to health outcomes studies, lucid books on statistical principles and methodology for observational studies and excellent mentoring. The lecture is titled, “An Observational Study Used to Illustrate Methodology for Such Studies.” Paul R. Rosenbaum is the Robert G. Putzel Professor in the Department of Statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of three books, Observational Studies (Springer 1995, 2002), Design of Observational Studies (Springer 2010), and Observation and Experiment: An Introduction to Causal Inference (Harvard University Press 2017). He received his BA in Statistics from Hampshire College and his AM and PhD in statistics from Harvard University. Before joining the Wharton School in 1986, he worked at the US Environmental Protection Agency, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and the Educational Testing Service. The R.A. Fisher Lectureship honors both the contributions of Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher and the work of a present-day statistician for their advancement of statistical theory and applications.

The 2019 Florence N. David Award will be presented to Susan S. Ellenberg, University of Pennsylvania, for her impactful leadership roles at the NIH, FDA and the University of Pennsylvania, developing and evaluating new methodologies and specialized approaches to improve the conduct of clinical trials; for influencing ethical practice and leading development of important regulatory policies; for leadership in setting standards for clinical trial data monitoring committees; for senior statistical leadership for many multicenter clinical research network clinical trials; for distinguished leadership in numerous professional societies and national and international committees addressing major public health challenges; and for serving as an exceptional academic role model for faculty and students. Susan Ellenberg will deliver the F.N. David Lecture at JSM in Denver on the Tuesday afternoon: “The Evolution of The Randomized Clinical Trial.”

The COPSS Presidents’ Award is given annually to a young member of the statistical community in recognition of outstanding contributions to the profession of statistics. The award is announced and presented at the Joint Statistical Meetings.