2010-2011 Awards Committee: Call for Nominations

The Awards Committee invites nominations for the following awards

Call for Nominations for the SSC Gold Medal

The Gold Medal is intended to honour a current leader in probability or statistics whose contributions in theory or in applied work have been substantial. Nominations are open to members of the SSC who are Canadian citizens or residents of Canada. A nomination consists of a recent curriculum vitæ, at least four letters of support, and a suggested citation to accompany the award. A nomination is effective for three successive competitions and may be updated annually.

Nominations must be received on or before January 31, 2011, by the Chair of the SSC Awards Committee:

Román Viveros-Aguilera
Department of Mathematics and Statistics  
McMaster University 
Hamilton, ON 
Canada L8S 4K1

VOX: (905) 525-9140 ext. 23425
FAX: (905) 522-0935
rviveros@math.mcmaster.ca

List of previous winners

Call for Nominations for SSC Award for Impact of Applied and Collaborative Work

The SSC award for impact of a statistician in applied and collaborative work is given to a Canadian, or someone residing in Canada, who is a member of the Society and who has made outstanding contributions in applied and collaborative work, the importance of which derives primarily from its relatively recent impact on a subject area outside of the statistical sciences, on an area of application, or on an organization.

The essential idea is that the award is for the impact of the work (not for its degree of technical sophistication, for example). The work should demonstrate the importance of the statistical sciences to other areas of endeavour, and should include an intellectual contribution to statistical science motivated by the area of application. Areas in which a substantial contribution would qualify include: formulation of new statistical questions and ideas uniquely appropriate to the subject matter discipline or the organization; development and application of conceptually new approaches appropriate to the subject matter or the organization; new implementation of the best combination of techniques to solve important and difficult research problems in the applied discipline; development of statistical methods that answer a question in another field that could not have been answered adequately before; application of creative statistical thinking with demonstration of clear understanding of the science/industry of the area of endeavour; establishment of the relative merits of alternative analytic approaches leading to guidelines useful to applied scientists in choosing among them. This list is intended to be examples of contributions and is not necessarily exhaustive.

The nomination package should consist of a letter of nomination and at least three letters of support, a curriculum vitæ, a “layperson” description of the work and its impact expressed in terms that would be suitable for publicity purposes, and a citation suitable for public announcement of the award. The nomination package should also include at least two letters from non-statisticians representing the field or organization that has felt the impact of the work. The letters must address how the contributions have had a recent impact. Letters of recommendation from those not directly involved in the research are particularly encouraged. The onus is on the nominator(s) to explain the work and to provide evidence of its impact in support of the nomination.

Nominations must be received on or before January 31, 2011, by the Chair of the Committee:

Professor Jamie Stafford
Department of Statistics
University of Toronto
Sydney Smith Hall
100 St. George Street

Toronto, ON
Canada M5S 3G3


 

Phone: (416) 946-5793
Fax: (416) 978-8299
stafford@utstat.toronto.edu

Electronic submission is encouraged, with PDF files preferred.

List of previous winners

Call for Nominations for SSC Honorary Membership

Honorary Membership in the SSC is intended to honour a probabilist or a statistician—or in special circumstances another individual—who made exceptional contributions to the development of the discipline. Nominations are open to people whose work was done primarily in Canada or who had a major impact in this country. Membership in the SSC is not a prerequisite. A nomination consists of a recent curriculum vitæ, at least one letter of support, and a suggested citation to accompany the award.

Nominations must be received on or before January 31, 2011, by the Chair of the SSC Awards Committee:

 

Román Viveros-Aguilera
Department of Mathematics and Statistics  
McMaster University 
Hamilton, ON 
Canada L8S 4K1

VOX: (905) 525-9140 ext. 23425 
FAX: (905) 522-0935
rviveros@math.mcmaster.ca

List of previous winners

Call for Nominations for the SSC Distinguished Service Award

The Distinguished Service Award is intended to honour a person who contributed substantially and over a period of several years to the operation or welfare of the SSC. A nomination consists of a recent curriculum vitæ, at least three letters of support (of which the nominator’s letter may be one), and a suggested citation to accompany the award.

Nominations must be received on or before January 31, 2011, by the Chair of the SSC Awards Committee:

 

Román Viveros-Aguilera
Department of Mathematics and Statistics  
McMaster University 
Hamilton, ON 
Canada L8S 4K1

VOX: (905) 525-9140 ext. 23425 
FAX: (905) 522-0935
rviveros@math.mcmaster.ca

List of previous winners

Call for Nominations for the Pierre Robillard Award

The aim of the Pierre Robillard Award is to recognize the best Ph.D. thesis defended at a Canadian university in a given year and written in the fields covered by The Canadian Journal of Statistics. Submitted theses will be evaluated by a committee whose members are appointed by the President of the SSC; their decision will be final. Judging will take into account the originality of the ideas and techniques, the possible applications and their treatment, and the potential impact on the statistical sciences. In any given year, no more than one winner will be selected; however, the committee may arrive at the conclusion that none of the submitted theses merits the award.

The award consists of a certificate, a monetary prize, and a one-year membership in the SSC. The winner will be invited to give a talk based on the thesis at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Society; assistance with expenses to attend the meeting may be provided. The winner will also be invited to submit a paper to The Canadian Journal of Statistics. If accepted, the paper will be identified as being based on the thesis which won the 2010 Pierre Robillard Award; the names of the university and the thesis supervisor will be clearly indicated. The thesis supervisor could be co-author of the paper.

The Pierre Robillard Award Committee Chair must receive the thesis and a nominating letter from the thesis supervisor by February 15, 2011. It is imperative that the supervisors address the three criteria below in their letter:

1. The originality of the ideas and techniques.
2. Possible applications and their treatment.
3. Potential impact on the statistical sciences.

In so doing, the supervisor may include excerpts of letters from external examiners. Complete letters from external examiners or referees will not be accepted. Official confirmation that the thesis has been defended in 2010 must also be provided. Electronic submission is strongly encouraged.

Submission Instructions

For electronic submission, the thesis should be in Postscript, Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), or Microsoft Word format. The thesis and covering letter can be e-mailed to the committee chair. The subject header of the electronic message should be “SSC Robillard Award Submission – StudentName” and the corresponding files should be named StudentName-thesis.pdf (or StudentName-thesis.doc, etc) and StudentName-coverletter.pdf (or StudentName-coverletter.doc, etc), where “StudentName” is replaced with the name of the student being nominated. Alternately, the covering letter can give a web site from which an electronic copy of the thesis can be downloaded.

If the thesis has to be submitted in another electronic format or on paper, the Pierre Robillard Award Committee Chair must be contacted before submission. Entries should include e-mail addresses and phone numbers of both the supervisor and the student, and be sent to:

Professor Keumhee Carrière
Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences

University of Alberta
632 Cab

Edmonton, AB
Canada T6G 2G1 


 

Phone: (780) 492-4230
Fax: (780) 492-6826
kc.carriere@ualberta.ca

List of previous winners

Student Research Presentation Awards

Awards will be given at the next SSC Annual Meeting for the best research presentations made by students. Entries will be judged on the quality of both the presentation and the underlying research. Up to two awards will be given: one for a talk in a contributed paper session and one for a poster presentation. Each award consists of a certificate and a $500 cash prize.

To be eligible for this award, a student must not have defended her/his thesis or completed his/her final degree requirements by December 31, 2010. In addition, the student must:

  • submit the abstract of a poster or contributed paper through the meeting website;
  • check-mark the box on the abstract contribution form that indicates interest in being considered for the award;
  • have his/her supervisor or department send, by February 11, 2011, an e-mail to studentawards@ssc.ca confirming the student status as of December 31, 2010;
  • prepare a summary of the results to be presented, no more than four pages in length, and submit it to studentawards@ssc.ca by March 15, 2011;
  • present the work or poster in person at the meeting.

Joint work is eligible, as long as the student makes the presentation.

Call for Nominations for the COPSS Award and Other Awards

One of the mandates of the SSC Awards Committee is to sponsor candidates for awards offered by other societies or bodies, including the COPSS Award. This award is presented annually to a member of one of the participating societies, including the SSC, in recognition of outstanding contributions to the profession. Nominations are currently open to individuals who will not yet reach their 41st birthday in the year 2011. In the special case where the statistically related terminal degree was obtained less than 12 years prior to the nomination deadline, a nominee will be eligible who will not yet reach his or her 46th birthday in the year 2011.

Please send your suggestions before December 1, 2010, to the Chair of the SSC Awards Committee:

Román Viveros-Aguilera
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
McMaster University
Hamilton, ON
Canada L8S 4K1

Phone: (905) 525-9140 ext. 23425
Fax: (905) 522-0935
rviveros@math.mcmaster.ca

Previous winners of the COPSS Presidents' Award

Call for nominations for the CRM-SSC Prize in Statistics

The Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM) and the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) solicit nominations for the CRM-SSC Prize, which is awarded in recognition of a statistical scientist's professional accomplishments in research during the first fifteen years after earning a doctorate.

The award, which includes a $3,000 cash prize, is bestowed at most once a year upon a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident of Canada whose research was carried out primarily in Canada. Recipients of the award, since its creation in 1999, have been Christian Genest, Robert J. Tibshirani, Colleen D. Cutler, Larry A. Wasserman, Charmaine B. Dean, Randy R. Sitter, Jiahua Chen, Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, Richard J. Cook, Paul Gustafson, Hugh A. Chipman, and Grace Y. Yi.

In 2011, eligibility will be limited to candidates who received their Ph.D. (or an equivalent degree) in the year 1996 or subsequently. Current membership in the SSC is not a prerequisite. The nominations will be examined by an Advisory Committee consisting of five members, three of whom are appointed by the SSC and two by the CRM. The committee is chaired by one of the two CRM representatives.

Nominations, including three letters of support and an up-to-date curriculum vitae (with a list of publications) should be submitted to the CRM before February 1, 2011. As files are not carried over from one year to the next, nominations must be renewed each year.

Please submit files to:

Monsieur le Directeur
Centre de recherches mathématiques
Université de Montréal
C.P. 6128, Succursale Centre-ville
Montréal (Québec) Canada H3C 3J7

VOX: (514) 343-7501
FAX: (514) 343-2254
directeur@CRM.UMontreal.CA

List of previous winners