Trevor Hastie and Hui Zou win 2025 ISI Founders of Statistics Prize

The International Statistical Institute is pleased to announce that Trevor Hastie and Hui Zou have been awarded the 2025 Founders of Statistics Prize for Contemporary Research Contributions. This prestigious award recognizes their influential paper, “Regularization and Variable Selection via the Elastic Net” (Zou & Hastie, 2005), published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B.

Trevor Hastie, the John A. Overdeck Professor of Statistics and Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University, is a leading figure in statistics and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. His work on the elastic net has revolutionized fields such as statistics, biostatistics, data science, and applied mathematics.

Hui Zou, a full professor at the University of Minnesota, earned his PhD in Statistics at Stanford University. His research focuses on statistical learning, flexible modeling, and statistical computing. A recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the IMS Tweedie Award, Hui is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher and ranks among the top 2% of global scientists according to Stanford University. He is a Fellow of the ASA, IMS, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The elastic net method has addressed key challenges in high-dimensional regression, improving prediction accuracy and stabilizing variable selection. Its impact spans various fields, particularly in biological and medical research, with notable applications in studies such as COVID-19’s impact on cancer patients (The Lancet, 2020) and biological age prediction using DNA methylation (Nature Reviews Genetics, 2018).

The Founders of Statistics Prize, sponsored by Elsevier, is awarded biennially at the ISI World Statistics Congress to honor research with a lasting impact on statistical theory, methodology, and applications. The prize includes a €5,000 cash award and travel support for the recipient to deliver the Founders of Statistics Lecture.

Trevor Hastie and Hui Zou were also honored—along with Martin Wainwright—at the Rao Prize Conference in May at Penn State. Hastie was the 2025 C. R. and Bhargavi Rao Prize recipient and Hui Zou was the 2025 C. G. Khatri Lecturer. [See the Rao Prize Conference report here.]