Each year, the statistical profession recognizes outstanding members at the Joint Statistical Meetings in an awards ceremony organized by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS).

The Presidents’ Award is presented in recognition of outstanding contributions to the statistics profession, and granted (with some exceptions) to an individual who has not yet reached his or her 41st birthday. This year’s recipient is Lester Mackey, Microsoft Research: For deep and beautiful theory transforming high-dimensional statistics and machine learning, including path-breaking work on Stein operators and discrepancy, ranking algorithms, recommender systems, cross validation, and concentration bounds for random matrices, with applications to weather, climate and healthcare; and for service to the profession including leadership and tremendously caring mentorship.

The George W. Snedecor Award, presented biennially to honor an individual who has been instrumental in the development of statistical theory in biometry and with a noteworthy publication in biometry in the last three years, is presented to Hongtu Zhu, University of North Carolina: For pioneering contributions to statistical theory and methodology in imaging genomics, medical imaging analysis, big data integration, and reinforcement learning; for developing innovative approaches in high-dimensional inference, causal inference, and machine learning; and for exemplary mentorship of students, postdoctoral researchers, and service to the statistical and AI communities.

The Florence N. David Award and Lectureship is presented biennially to a female statistician who serves as a role model to other women by her contributions to the profession through excellence in research, leadership of multidisciplinary collaborative groups, statistics education, or service to the professional societies. This year’s award is to Kathy Ensor, Rice University: For extraordinary leadership and contributions to the statistic profession; outstanding mentorship to the next generation of statisticians and data scientists; and for excellence in collaborative team science research.

The COPSS Distinguished Achievement Award and Lectureship recognizes outstanding contributions to statistical methods that have had significant impact on scientific investigations. This year’s recipient is James Robins, Harvard University: For helping create the modern field of causal inference; for developing ground-breaking methods for causal inference; for the analysis of missing data; for semi- and non-parametric models, and for the wide adoption of these methods in public health, clinical medicine, and the social sciences.

In addition, the COPSS Emerging Leaders awards were presented: see here.