The Australian Academy of Science (AAS) announced the election of 21 distinguished Australian scientists as New Fellows, among whom are Noel Cressie (University of Wollongong) and Kerrie Mengersen (Queensland University of Technology). Ruth Williams (University of California, San Diego) was also admitted as a Corresponding Member.

Left-right: Noel Cressie, Kerrie Mengersen, Ruth Williams

Noel Cressie is a world leader in statistical methodology for analyzing spatial and spatio-temporal data, and its applications to environmental science. His fundamental contributions changed the basic paradigm for analyzing observations in space and space-time. Noel has also contributed to research on pollution monitoring, climate prediction, ocean health, soil chemistry, and glacier movement, and is a NASA Science Team Member for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 mission. Responding to the huge volumes of complex data in environmental research, Noel has made ground-breaking innovations for big data analytics for remote sensing and climate change.

Kerrie Mengersen has made internationally recognised contributions to the field of Bayesian statistics. She has consistently maintained a dual focus on statistical methodology and its application, with methodological contributions at the frontier of Bayesian theory, methodology and computation, and applied contributions to substantive problems in health, environment and industry. Kerrie is also well known for her leadership ability and passion for developing young researchers in statistics and the applied sciences.

Ruth J. Williams has been admitted to the AAS as a “Corresponding Member” (this is a special category within the Fellowship, comprising eminent international scientists with strong ties to Australia who have made outstanding contributions to science) for outstanding scientific contributions to her field. Ruth was born in Australia. Her work has had a deep and lasting impact on heavy traffic analysis within the field of stochastic networks. In 2016, she was awarded the John von Neumann Theory Prize “for seminal research contributions over the past several decades, to the theory and applications of stochastic networks/systems and their heavy traffic approximations.”