Make a donation to this award fund

Richard Lewis Tweedie played a significant role throughout his professional career in mentoring young colleagues at work and through professional society activities. With funds donated by his friends and family, IMS created the Tweedie New Researcher Award.

Purpose

To fund travel to present the “Tweedie New Researcher Invited Lecture” at the IMS New Researchers Conference.

Eligibility

Amount

Up to U.S. $2000 per award, to be reimbursed against receipts.

Nomination Process

When you are ready, you may nominate someone using the form here.

For the nomination you will need:

1. Recent CV (not older than 2 years).
2. Extended abstract – this is longer than a regular abstract for a paper.
3. Two letters of recommendation total (this can include a letter from the nominator and one other writer or two others and no letter from the nominator).
4. A draft citation, if your nominee were to receive the award.

Deadline

All nominations must be received by December 1.

Additional Information

Nominations will be reviewed by the IMS Committee on Travel Awards. Nominators and the recipient will be notified in early March. Only one award may be made.

About Richard Lewis Tweedie

There have been several obituaries written about Richard’s life and work. The following is condensed from his friend and colleague William T M Dunsmuir’s obituary:

Richard Tweedie’s contribution to the fields of applied probability modeling and statistical science was outstanding. Richard was an international scholar, working successfully in the private sector, as well as an outstanding university administrator. Although for much of his career Richard managed a heavy administrative load, he maintained an extraordinary research output throughout. He contributed fundamental results in the theory of Markov Chains on general state spaces. A major focus of this research was development of stability theory for such processes that could be readily applied in modeling a range of complex phenomena arising in diverse fields such as queuing theory, systems theory, statistical modeling including time series and decision theory. A particular achievement, of which Richard was justifiably proud, was publication of his book with Sean Meyn entitled Markov Chains and Stochastic Stability (Springer-Verlag, 1993), which was given the 1994 Operations Research Society of America’s award for the best research publication in Applied Probability.

From about 1994 onwards Richard’s developing interests in statistical methods in the epidemiology of the health effects of exposure to environmental and occupational pollutants led to research in Bayesian modeling for meta-analysis and publication bias. This also stimulated his interest in the question of convergence rates for MCMC sampling schemes, a major focus of his most recent research and publications.

Richard is known by many as a brilliant theoretician. However throughout his career he also worked with numerous collaborators on a range of interesting and challenging practical problems. He was a wonderful consultant and communicator with a knack of explaining complicated statistical ideas to practical people. His consulting and collaborative work led to a substantial number of publications in a diverse range of topics and journals.

He was devoted to the statistical profession and, no matter how busy he was, he found time to involve himself seriously in the organization, promotion and scholarship of professional societies. He served as Editor of the Annals of Applied Probability and of Statistical Science and was an Associate Editor for a number of other leading journals.

A great conversationalist and an outstanding humor and quick wit made being in Richard’s company both memorable and stimulating. He is missed by friends all over the world.