Honorary Member
SSC Honorary Membership awarded to David R. Brillinger
David R. Brillinger, Professor of Statistics at the University of California at Berkeley, is now an Honourary Member of the SSC. This nomination, which was announced at the May 2010 Meeting of the Society held in Québec, recognizes Professor Brillinger’s outstanding distinction and his contributions to the development of the statistical sciences in Canada.
David Ross Brillinger was born on October 27, 1937, in Toronto. In 1955 he entered the University of Toronto, graduating with a B.A. with Honours in Pure Mathematics in 1959, while also serving as a Lieutenant in the Canadian Naval Reserve. He was one of the five winners of the Putnam mathematical competition in 1958. He then went on to obtain his M.A. and Ph.D. in Mathematics at Princeton University, in 1960 and 1961, the latter under the guidance of John W. Tukey.
During the period 1962-4, David held halftime appointments as a Lecturer in Mathematics at Princeton, and a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey. In 1964 he was appointed Lecturer and two years later Reader in Statistics at the London School of Economics. After spending a sabbatical year at Berkeley in 1967-8, he returned to become Professor of Statistics in 1970, and has been there ever since. In the course of his career, he has supervised 40 doctoral theses and published over 220 papers in a wide variety of books, scientific journals, and conference proceedings.
David’s career has been exemplary in every respect. He has made seminal contributions to the theory of time series and point processes. His outstanding methodological work has always been motivated through collaborations with researchers from other fields. His techniques for spike train analysis are widely known in neurophysiology, and his work on modeling earthquake risk is equally well known in seismology. More recently, David has also contributed to the advancement of environmental statistics by developing techniques for animal tracking and wildfire risk. He has also written papers on sports statistics, particularly hockey and soccer.
Although he spent most of his career abroad, David has always maintained close ties with Canada and its statistical community in particular. His contributions have been numerous and varied. He was President of the SSC in 2001-2 and was associated with The Canadian Journal of Statistics both as an Associate Editor (1977-88) and as a Consulting Editor (1992-4). In addition to his work on various SSC committees, he was a long-term member of Statistics Canada’s Advisory Committee of Statistical Methods (1982-91) and he served two terms on NSERC’s Statistical Sciences Grant Selection Committee (1977-80, 1987-90). Various Canadian universities and institutions also called on him for reviews and scientific advisory panels, including the Fields Institute (1992-8) and the Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences (1999-2005).
David’s record of scholarship and his work with the Canadian statistical and mathematical communities have been recognized through receipt of the SSC Gold Medal (1992), fellowships in the Royal Society of Canada (1985) and honourary doctorates at the universities of Western Ontario (1999), Waterloo (2003) and McMaster (2008).
However remarkable was David’s work within the Canadian statistical community, it represents only a fraction of his efforts in furthering statistical science globally. In particular, he was President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1994-5) and of The International Environmetrics Society (2006-8). A member of numerous international grant and scientific review panels, he served in editorial or advisory capacities for Springer’s Series in Statistics and Lecture Notes in Statistics (1976-87) and for 12 journals: the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B (1968-9), The Annals of Mathematical Statistics (1970-2), The Annals of Probability (1972-8), The Annals of Statistics (1972-8), the Journal of Multivariate Analysis (1975-8), the Journal of Time Series Analysis (1979-87), the Journal of Theoretical Neurobiology (1980-7), Statistical Science (1984-7, 1994-8), the International Statistical Review (1987-91), Chance (1987-93), Environmetrics (1990- ), and the Latin American Journal of Probability and Mathematical Statistics (2006- ).
On the international scene, David’s contributions have led to many honours, including Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1969), Fellow of the American Statistical Association (1972), Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute (1974), Guggenheim Fellow (1975-6, 1982-3), IMS Medallion Lecturer (1974, 1979), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1983), Wald Lecturer (1983), winner of the R.A. Fisher Award (1991), Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993), winner of the Parzen Prize for Statistical Innovation (2001), Foreign Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (2004), Neyman Lecturer (2005), and Foreign Member of the Brazilian Academy of Science (2006).
David has been married for 49 years to Lorie, whom many have met at SSC meetings over the years. They had two sons. The older, Jef, died after a fifteen-year fight against cancer. The younger, Matt, lives in Ottawa with his wife and their three children, who love skating. David, whose eight-year-old grandson plays hockey, has been a Toronto Maple Leafs fan since he was three years old and he does not hesitate to root for them, even in California. At an SSC banquet some years ago, he gave the after-dinner speech with the title “Why I became a statistician.” The punch line was because he couldn’t make the competitive hockey teams (at a time when the Leafs were good!). David likes to say that his role models as he was growing up were his four uncles, all Toronto taxi drivers.
David was present at the SSC Annual Meeting to receive his Honourary Membership. The citation that accompanied the nomination reads as follows: “For unwavering support over many years of statistical and other sciences in Canada; for fondamental contributions to the theory of time series and point processes and their applications to seismology, geophysics and population biology; for contributions to the Statistical Society of Canada, particularly as President; and for numerous editorial contributions.”
SSC Gold Medalist
SSC Gold Medal awarded to Louis-Paul Rivest
The Gold Medal of the Statistical Society of Canada is awarded this year to Louis-Paul Rivest, professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Université Laval. This award is the highest distinction bestowed by the SSC. It is given to a Canadian probabilist or statistician who has made substantial contributions to the development of his/her area of research through methodological work or applications. The Gold Medal is intended to honour outstanding current leaders in their field.
Born in Montréal, Louis-Paul studied mathematics at the Université de Montréal (B.Sc., 1975; M.Sc., 1976) and at McGill University (Ph.D., 1978). His thesis was written under the supervision of Harold Ruben. From 1978 to 1981, Louis-Paul was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Toronto. He then joined Université Laval, where he founded a Statistical Consulting Service soon after his arrival. Promoted to Associate in 1984 and Full Professor in 1988, he has held a Canada Research Chair in statistical sampling and data analysis since 2004. He was a Visiting Professor at ETH Zürich (1987), at Cornell University (1995-6) and at the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica (2009).
Louis-Paul’s accomplishments in research are numerous, both in theoretical and applied statistics. He has authored or co-authored some 80 methodological articles and an additional 15 papers in conference proceedings. He published regularly in the best journals, including The Canadian Journal of Statistics (11), Biometrics (9), JASA (5), and Biometrika (5). He also wrote three short monographs for the Québec Department of Wildlife and Natural Resources, contributed two book chapters and co-edited (with Pierre Lavallée from Statistics Canada) a book entitled “Méthodes d’enquêtes et sondages: Pratiques européenne et nord-américaine.” To date, he has supervised 47 M.Sc. students, 5 Ph.D. students and 4 Postdoctoral Fellows.
Beyond figures, Louis-Paul’s career is characterized by a wide spectrum of significant contributions. His publications in directional statistics are well known and commonly used to study the relative motion of tectonic plates. Similarly, the semiparametric inference methods that he developed with his colleagues at Laval have paved the way to numerous applications of copula models in actuarial science and finance. More recently, he adapted the copula modeling approach to multivariate biomedical data in the presence of censoring and truncation.
For many years, Louis-Paul has also been working in close collaboration with biologists. He developed, among others, sophisticated techniques used for estimating the size of one of the world’s largest herds of wild animals, the Rivière George Caribou Herd in Northern Québec. His contributions to capture-recapture methodology are also well known and have been incorporated into the “Rcapture” package within the R Statistical Software.
Finally, Louis-Paul is also acclaimed for his work in survey sampling. In addition to developing stratification algorithms and small-area estimation methods, he is a specialist of the treatment of outliers in survey data and is the author (along with Jean-François Beaumont from Statistics Canada) of an expository paper on this topic, recently published by Elsevier in the “Handbook of Statistics Vol. 29: Sample Surveys” edited by D. Pfeffermann and C. R. Rao.
Through the years, Louis-Paul served the statistical community in several ways, particularly within the Statistical Society of Canada. He was President of the SSC (2000-1), President of the Survey Methods Section (1996-7), Chair of the Scientific Committee for the 1998 Annual Meeting in Sherbrooke, as well as an elected member of the Board of Directors (1987-9, 1999-2002) in addition to serving on a large number of committees.
Louis-Paul was also quite active in organizing international meetings (e.g., the Quatrième colloque francophone sur les sondages in 2005 and “Capture 2006,” both held in Québec) and in editorial capacities for Survey Methodology (Associate Editor since 1991) and The Canadian Journal of Statistics, for which he served as Associate Editor (1984-91, 1998-2007), Senior Associate Editor (1991-4) and Guest Editor for the March 2008 issue on capture-recapture models. In addition, Louis-Paul was a member of Statistics Canada’s Advisory Committee on Statistical Methods (1988-94) and served on NSERC’s Statistical Sciences Grant Selection Committee (1987-90).
Louis-Paul is indebted to his Laval colleagues in mathematics and statistics for the positive work environment in their department. He attributes many of his accomplishments to his wife Nicole, a lawyer from Québec City that he married in 1984, who has constantly supported him and who keeps him grounded in reality. They have three grown-up children: Yannick, Nydia, and Thierry.
Louis-Paul had the good fortune of receiving his award on home turf, in the presence of his family and friends in attendance at the Society’s Annual Meeting held May 23 to 26. The citation that accompanied the award reads as follows: “To Louis-Paul Rivest, in recognition of his contributions to the development of multivariate analysis, directional statistics, survey sampling and inference for capture-recapture models, as well as for his numerous applications thereof in various fields, including biology, biomechanics, ecology, and geophysics.”
Distinguished Service Award
Distinguished Service Award: Paul Cabilio
The 2010 Distinguished Service Award is awarded to Paul Cabilio, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Statistics at Acadia University, Wolfville. This award is given at most once a year to a member of the Statistical Society of Canada who contributed substantially and over a period of several years to the operation or welfare of the SSC.
Paul Cabilio first studied at McGill University, in Montréal. He completed a B.Sc. in Mathematics in 1966 and obtained an M.Sc. in Statistics in 1969, after gaining work experience as a statistician for the Geological Survey of Canada in Ottawa. He then studied under the direction of Herbert Robbins at Columbia University in New York and received his Ph.D. in Statistics in 1973. Except for sabbaticals in Haifa (1979–80), Rome (1986–87) and Ottawa (1994–5, 2001), he spent his academic career at Acadia, retiring in 2007.
An expert in nonparametric statistics and rank-based methods, Paul published in some of the best journals, including the Journal of the American Statistical Association, The Annals of Statistics, and The Canadian Journal of Statistics. He was a strong promoter of the discipline and served the SSC is many capacities throughout his career.
Within the SSC, Paul was particularly active in the organization of meetings. After serving as Chair of the Local Arrangements Committee for the 1993 Annual Meeting in Wolfville, he remained as a member of the Program Committee until 1996 and Chair from then on. He served as Program Secretary until 2002, while simultaneously being a Regional Representative for the Atlantic Provinces on the Board of Directors for four years (1994–8). In 2003, he was elected for a third term. He was then Executive Secretary of the Society from 2006 to 2009. He further served on the Editorial Board of Liaison and was a long-time SSC local representative at Acadia.
Paul also had a distinguished service career within his home university. He was a member of the Senate for four separate terms and a member of the Board of Governors from 1996 to 1998. He served on various committees at the university level and in the Faculty Association; he was President of the latter in 1980–1. He was also Head of his own department for three terms (1988–94, 2002–3, 2004–6) and Acting Dean in 2003–4.
Paul has been married to Juta for 41 years. They met at McGill. Their son Adrian is working as a computer scientist in Toronto, while their daughter Nora is presently doing her medical residency in Charlottetown. Paul enjoys canoeing, hiking and wilderness camping. He is also an avid gardener; he owns a greenhouse in which he grows exotic orchids.
Those among us who had a chance to work with Paul know that he is a dedicated team player. He researches carefully the issues at hand and presents his arguments in a cogent, concise and insightful manner. More often than not, he is quite right and he will quietly and effectively convince you of his case. His sense of humor is particularly enjoyable.
Paul received his award at the SSC Annual Meeting held in Québec, May 23–26. It was given to him in recognition of “his voluntary work and dedication to the SSC spanning a period of many years, and his meticulous attention to detail.”
Pierre-Robillard Award
Pierre-Robillard Award: Michelle Qian Zhou
Michelle Qian Zhou is the winner of the 2009 Pierre Robillard Award of the Statistical Society of Canada. This prize recognizes the best Ph.D. thesis in probability or statistics defended at a Canadian university in a given year.
Michelle’s thesis is entitled “Information matrices in estimating function approach: Tests for model misspecification and model selection.” It was written at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Mary E. Thompson and Peter X.-K. Song. In her work, Michelle focused on situations where the efficiency of the estimators of a model’s structural parameters could be affected if the covariance matrix is misspecified. In order to detect potential problems of this type, she designed tests based on the comparison of two information matrices. She examined the asymptotic behaviour of these tests and studied their power via simulation. She also proposed tools for making the best possible choice of covariance structure within a given class. She then compared these selection techniques with existing ones through simulations and data analyses.
Michelle was born in Tianjin, one of the four municipalities that have provincial-level status in the People’s Republic of China. She did her undergraduate studies at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei (Anhui Province). She started her Ph.D. program at the University of Waterloo in January 2006 and defended her thesis in August 2009. She now holds a postdoctoral position in the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard University.
Speaking in an interview, Michelle said that her father was the most influential person in her life. “He wanted me to be a civic-minded individual who contributes to society as a whole. He really motivated me to work hard always. Unfortunately, he died of cancer when I was only 18. I would like to dedicate my thesis and the Pierre Robillard Award to his memory.”
The criteria used in selecting the winner of the Pierre Robillard Award include the originality of ideas and techniques, the possible applications and their treatment, and the potential impact of the work. The award is named in memory of Professor Pierre Robillard, an outstanding dynamic young statistician at the Université de Montréal, whose untimely death in 1975 cut short what promised to be a highly distinguished career.
CRM-SSC Prize in Statistics
CRM-SSC Prize in Statistics awarded to Grace Y. Yi
Grace Y. Yi, Professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo, is the 2010 winner of the CRM-SSC Prize. Within 10 years of her Ph.D., she has contributed in a significant way to the development of statistical methods for longitudinal studies and for the analysis of time-to-event data, especially for the treatment of missing observations and measurement errors. Her work on the asymptotic behavior of parametric and semi-parametric inference techniques has also been influential in statistics and biostatistics.
Grace studied mathematics at Sichuan University in the People’s Republic of China, where she obtained a B.Sc. in 1986 and an M. Sc. in 1989. She then came to Canada to study statistics. She received an M.A. from York University in 1996 and completed her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in 2000, under the supervision of Don Fraser. After postdoctoral studies with Richard J. Cook, she was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo in 2001. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2004 and will become a Full Professor on July 1 this year. In 2004, Grace received a University Faculty Award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. Her research has been supported by this funding agency since the beginning of her career.
Grace has been quite successul in advancing foundational work and developing novel methodology for health and medical research applications. She was invited to present her work at numerous national and international conferences, including the Annual Meeting of the Statistical Society of Canada, the Joint Statistical Meetings, the Statistics Canada Symposium, and meetings of the International Biometrics Society and the International Chinese Statistical Association. She has served as an Associate Editor for The Canadian Journal of Statistics and the Journal of Applied Probability and Statistics. Grace has also been a Biostatistics and Research Methods Advisor and an external Biostatistics reviewer for the Grant Review Panel of the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, Ontario Region. She has done extensive refereeing work for statistical journals and grant agencies. To date, she has supervised 4 M.Sc. and 5 Ph.D. students.
Grace credits her success to her family, which has been supportive of her career, and to inspirational collaborators and colleagues at the University of Waterloo. She is grateful to her husband, Wenqing He, Professor in the Department of Statistical and Actuarial Sciences at the University of Western Ontario, who deserves credit for extensive collaborations and personal support. Grace and Wenqing have a son, Morgan, who enjoys hockey, swimming and playing cards, and a daughter, Joy, who loves figure skating, singing and gymnastics.
Grace Y. Yi is the twelfth recipient of the CRM-SSC Prize. Previous winners of the award were Christian Genest (Laval), Robert J. Tibshirani (Stanford), Colleen D. Cutler (Waterloo), Larry A. Wasserman (Carnegie-Mellon), Charmaine B. Dean (Simon Fraser), Randy R. Sitter (Simon Fraser), Jiahua Chen (Waterloo), Jeffrey S. Rosenthal (Toronto), Richard J. Cook (Waterloo), Paul Gustafson (UBC), and Hugh A. Chipman (Acadia).
The Canadian Journal of Statistics Award
The Canadian Journal of Statistics Award: Lajos Horváth, Piotr Kokoszka, and Matthew L. Reimherr
The Canadian Journal of Statistics Award is presented each year by the Statistical Society of Canada to the author(s) of an article published in the Journal, in recognition of the outstanding quality of the paper’s methodological innovation and presentation.
This year’s winner is the article entitled “Two sample inference in functional linear models” (vol. 37, no 4, pp. 571-91), by Lajos Horváth, Piotr Kokoszka, and Matthew L. Reimherr. The paper proposes a method of comparing two linear models in which explanatory variables are functions and response variables can be either scalars or functions. In such models, the parameter vectors (or matrices) are integral operators acting on a function space. The authors show how to test whether these operators are the same in two independent samples. Their tests are based on statistics whose limiting distribution is always chi-squared, whether the response variables are scalars or functions. In addition to having good finite-sample properties, these statistics are readily computable using the R package FDA. In the paper, the approach is illustrated using egg-laying curves of Mediterranean flies and data from terrestrial magnetic observatories.
Lajos Horváth was born, raised and educated in Hungary. Before joining the University of Utah, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Carleton University from 1985 to 1987 under the supervision of Miklós Csörgő. Lajos is a very prolific researcher. The author or co-author of three books and some 250 papers, he is a specialist in asymptotic theory and its applications in the context of time series, empirical processes, and functional data analysis.
A Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Utah State University in Logan, Piotr Kokoszka is originally from Poland. He studied applied mathematics at Wrocław Technical University and probability theory at Boston University. He was a postdoctoral fellow in Salt Lake City and a lecturer at the University of Liverpool before taking his current position in 2000. His research is concerned with stochastic modeling and statistical inference for time series, functional data, and applications to space physics.
Matthew L. Reimherr was born and raised in Salt Lake City. He received a B.S. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Statistics at the University of Utah, under the supervision of Lajos Horváth. He is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Statistics at the University of Chicago. His interests are in time series, functional data analysis, and statistical genetics.
Lise Manchester Award
SSC Lise Manchester Award awarded to Professor Raymond F. Currie
Professor Raymond F. Currie is the 2010 recipient of the Lise Manchester Award. This biennial award is given by the Statistical Society of Canada in commemoration of the late Dr Lise Manchester’s abiding interest in using statistical methods to study matters of relevance to society. The award recognizes excellence in statistical research which considers problems of public interest and which is potentially useful for formation of Canadian public policy.
This year’s award is given to Professor Currie, in his capacity as Executive Director of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN), “for his leadership role and vision in bringing the network to a high level of excellence in the promotion and use of a broad range of microdata for research work that has influenced the formation of social and health policies in Canada.”
The CRDCN comprises 24 research data centres located in universities across Canada. These centers provide researchers with confidential microdata from various sources, as well as computer resources and technical support needed for their analysis. At least one Statistics Canada analyst is present in each centre to assist researchers and to ensure data confidentiality. The centres also offer training and dissemination activities including seminars, workshops, summer schools, and fellowships.
Recently retired from his position, Professor Currie was the Executive Director for CRDCN almost since its foundation in 2001. With his characteristically high level of energy, he stimulated the development of the network, from an initial 9 to now 24 centres, and he developed policies that helped it become truly national in character. He also spearheaded three large grant applications, all of which were successful.
In 2005, the network received a joint 5-year grant of $ 1.6 million per annum from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Since 2008, a four-year award from the Canada Foundation for Innovation has led to the development of an intranet lightpath between the centres and to improvements in the documentation of Statistics Canada survey data through the creation of DDI 3.0 compatible metadata on over 60 data sets. Finally, the CRDCN is about to renew a three-year research contract with Human Resources and Skills Development Canada for up to $ 1 million for social policy contract research. In this decade, the CRDCN supported over 1200 projects and 2600 researchers, including 1000 graduate students. This has led to over 1000 publications and many significant developments for the social sciences in Canada.
Professor Currie was born and brought up in Winnipeg. He entered the Franciscan Order in the Roman Catholic Church at the age of 19. He studied theology in Québec, was ordained a priest in 1960 and conducted ministry all across Western Canada until 1967. He then went to New York to pursue graduate studies in sociology at Fordham University, where he earned an M.A. (1969) and a Ph.D. (1973). He joined the University of Manitoba as Professor of Sociology in 1972 and resigned from the priesthood in 1973. He was later Head of the Department of Sociology (1979-84) and Dean of the Faculty of Arts (1991-9).
In addition to being an active scholar and an outstanding administrator, Professor Currie served on a number of national socio-economic committees and local volunteer organizations. He received many awards, including an “Outstanding Contribution” award from the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association (1994), an “Innovation in Management” award from the Canadian Association of University Business Officers (1994), the Peter D. Curry Chancellor’s Award for Distinct Contributions to University Governance and/or Development at the University of Manitoba (1999), the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal for public service (2002), and the Outstanding Achievement Award (2007) from the University of Manitoba Faculty of Arts. He was named Dean Emeritus in 2000.
Professor Currie and his wife Charlene live in Winnipeg, near their daughter Katie, their son Vincent and his partner Sherri, as well as two grandchildren. For additional information about Raymond F. Currie’s life and career, readers may refer to his autobiography entitled “Secure and Uncertain: A Father’s Story” published in 2008 by Anderson House Press.
SSC Impact Award
SSC Impact Award: Abdel H. El-Shaarawi
Professor Abdel H. El-Shaarawi is the 2010 recipient of the SSC Award for Impact of Applied and Collaborative Work. The award recognizes outstanding contributions by a member of the SSC that have made relatively recent impact on an organization or a subject area that is not cognate with the statistical sciences.
This year’s award is given to Professor El-Shaarawi “in recognition of his pioneering work in developing new research directions in environmetrics and statistical water quality, and for contributing to establish Canada’s leadership in interdisciplinary research in statistical and environmental sciences.”
Abdel has played a determining role in generating a truly symbiotic cross-disciplinary collaboration between statisticians, environmentalists, ecologists and policy makers. He unified disparate scientific efforts under the same roof of The International Environmetrics Society (TIES) and the journal Environmetrics, for which he served as founding President and Editor, respectively. Indeed, by his bold exploration of new research directions and, in particular, statistical aspects of water quality control, Abdel managed to build a solid bridge between mathematics, statistics and environmental science; he has become a leading figure of environmetrics, a new and very actively developing branch of statistical science. Some of his most recent research activities had a substantial impact on national and international management and preservation of water resources. He was involved, among others, in issues concerning the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, the assessment of the Canadian Water Quality Index, the program on the National Assessment of Water/Wastewater Systems in First Nations Communities, and the National Agri-Environmental Standards Initiative.
Abdel was born in Zagazig, Egypt. He studied mathematics at the University of Cairo (B.Sc. 1964; M.Sc. 1968). He then came to Canada and pursued doctoral studies at the University of Waterloo. He completed his thesis in 1973 under the joint supervision of William F. Forbes and Ross L. Prentice. He then began a career as a Research Scientist for the Canada Centre for Inland Waters in Burlington, Ontario. Since 1980, he has also been a part-time Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at McMaster University, and he was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Western Ontario (1986-96) and at the University of British Columbia (2001-5). During his career, he also held Visiting Professorships at the Université de Metz (France, 1983-4), at the Università degli Studi di Genova (Italy, 2002-3), and at Sultan Qaboos University (Oman, 2006-7). He was Visiting Professor for shorter periods at the University of Kuwait (1998, 1999), Masarykova Univerzita Brno (Czech Republic, 1998, 1999), and King Saud University (Saudi Arabia, 2000).
Abdel’s curriculum vitae lists over 100 peer-reviewed articles, 12 papers in conference proceedings, 3 book chapters, and 17 other publications in scientific series. In addition to founding the journal Environmetrics in 1989 and serving as Editor in Chief until 2009, he was Co-Editor in Chief of the Encyclopaedia of Environmetrics, an Associate Editor for 7 different journals, and an Editor for 10 books and special issues of journals. Currently he is the interim Editor in Chief of the International Statistical Review. Furthermore, he supervised 10 M.Sc. and 3 Ph.D. students at McMaster, 1 Ph.D. at the Université de Metz, and 4 postdoctoral fellows. Finally, he also organized no less than 14 environmetrics conferences.
Abdel’s outstanding work and involvement in the statistical community earned him several awards and distinctions. In 2001 TIES established the Abdel El-Shaarawi Young Researcher’s Award, given to an environmental statistician under the age of 40. Abdel is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA), and a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He received the Twentieth Century Distinguished Service Award for outstanding contribution to environmental statistics, the 1996 Distinguished Medal of the ASA Section on Statistics and the Environment, the 2008 University of Waterloo - Faculty of Mathematics Alumni Achievement Award, and The Excellence Award from the Government of Canada in 1995.
Abdel has been married to Sylvia Rose Esterby since 1976. They have collaborated in environmetrics research and the founding of TIES. They have two daughters, Nadia and Sarah. Nadia is currently finishing her Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and Sarah is in her final year of Arts and Contemporary Studies at Ryerson University in Toronto. Abdel enjoys outdoor life, camping, travels, walking, reading, and world affairs. He is also interested in world history, particularly in the history and philosophy of science. He enjoys playing squash and watching soccer and tennis on television.
For additional information about the work and career of Abdel, readers may refer to “A conversation with Abdel H. El-Shaarawi,” published in Statistical Science, vol. 18 (2003), pp. 481-8.
