Award Winners in 2007
- Honorary Member
- SSC Gold Medalist
- Distinguished Service Award
- Pierre-Robillard Award
- CRM-SSC Prize in Statistics
- The Canadian Journal of Statistics Award
Honorary Member
SSC Honorary Membership awarded to Professor Agnes M. Herzberg
The Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) today announced that Professor Agnes M. Herzberg has been named an Honorary Member. Honorary Membership of the SSC is awarded to a statistical scientist of outstanding distinction who has contributed to the development of the statistical sciences in Canada. The formal announcement of this award was made by SSC President Charmaine Dean at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s on the opening day of the 2007 SSC Annual Meeting.
Professor Herzberg obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Saskatchewan, she spent her early career in the Department of Mathematics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, and more recently in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Queen’s University, where she is currently a Professor Emeritus. Professor Herzberg has a long and distinguished record of research in experimental design and applied statistics. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, she was at the forefront of research on rotatable response surface designs. Professor Herzberg also contributed extensively to the theory of optimal experimental design. In the past two decades, Professor Herzberg has made substantial contributions in areas such as model selection, robust designs and experimental design for medical experiments.
Other very notable activities conducted by Professor Herzberg include Editor for 26 years of Short Book Reviews, a publication of the International Statistical Institute, and also serving as an Associate Editor of both the Annals of Statistics and Biometrika. She established and maintains an annual conference on Statistics, Science and Public Policy at Herstmonceux Castle in the United Kingdom. Professor Herzberg has also had a long history in the Statistical Society of Canada, serving on many committees over the years and most notably as President of the Society in 1991-1992. In 1999, she was awarded the SSC Distinguished Service Award in recognition of her long and excellent service to the Society and to the development of the statistical sciences in Canada.
The award citation reads:
“To Agnes Margaret Herzberg, for fundamental contributions to the design of experiments, applied statistics and data analysis; for her organization and leadership of conferences on statistics, science and public policy, and for dedicated service to the international statistical community.”
SSC Gold Medalist
SSC Gold Medal awarded to Professor Don L. McLeish
The Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) has announced that Professor Don L. McLeish has been awarded the 2007 SSC Gold Medal. The Gold Medal is the highest award of the SSC and is awarded to a person who has made substantial contributions to statistics or probability, either in mathematical development or in applied work. The Gold Medal is intended to honour outstanding current leaders in their fields. The formal announcement of this award was made by SSC President Charmaine Dean at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s on the opening day of the 2007 SSC Annual Meeting.
Professor McLeish received his Ph.D. from McGill University in Montreal. He followed that with a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago. He spent 2 years at York University and 7 years at the University of Alberta before taking up his present position in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo in 1982. He was appointed Full Professor in 1984. During this time Professor McLeish has also been a visiting professor at a number of prestigious universities worldwide.
Professor McLeish has been an outstanding researcher in probability and statistics throughout his career. His early work was on the asymptotic theory of martingales, and in 1975, he originated the idea of mixingales, which has had a great impact on a wide range of applications of probability and statistics. Professor McLeish has also been very active in the area of statistical inference and estimating functions. In 1988 and 1994, he and Professor Christopher Small published two books on this topic which are still widely cited. In recent years, Professor McLeish has been interested in quantitative finance, and in 2005, he published a book on Monte Carlo Methods in Finance which has been very well received.
Professor McLeish has been extremely productive in his research, publishing 38 refereed papers as well as three books and scores of invited presentations. He has also supervised over 50 graduate students. His research has been continuously supported by NSERC since 1974, and he chaired the NSERC Statistical Sciences grant selection committee in 1982-83. In 1983, Professor McLeish was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He served as editor of The Canadian Journal of Statistics from 1985 to 1988 and won The Canadian Journal of Statistics Award for the best paper published in that journal in 2002.
The award citation reads:
“To Donald Leslie McLeish, for his groundbreaking contributions to the theory of martingales and the development of mixingales, for outstanding contributions to the theory and methodology of estimation, and for exceptional research contributions in probability, statistics and quantitative finance.”
Distinguished Service Award
SSC Distinguished Service Award awarded to Professor Brajendra Sutradhar
The Statistical Society of Canada has announced that Professor Brajendra Sutradhar has been awarded the 2007 SSC Distinguished Service Award. This award is given to a member of the SSC who has made substantial contributions to the running or welfare of the Society over a period of several years. The formal announcement of this award was made by SSC President Charmaine Dean at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s on the opening day of the 2007 SSC Annual Meeting.
Professor Sutradhar obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario in 1984 and then joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Memorial University of Newfoundland. In 2004, he was awarded the rank of University Research Professor in recognition of his outstanding contributions to research in statistics, particularly in the areas of longitudinal data analysis, generalized linear mixed models and modeling using multivariate t distributions. Over his career, Professor Sutradhar has published over 80 papers in refereed journals, and has supervised 24 graduate students. He was made an elected member of the International Statistical Institute in 1991 and an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2006.
Professor Sutradhar’s service to the SSC and statistics goes back 18 years, since he was the Local Arrangements Chair for the 1990 Annual Meeting of the Society in St. John’s. His service to the annual meetings continues today as he is again the Local Arrangements Chair for the 2007 Annual Meeting. In the intervening years, he has spent many years on the Program Committee and was the Chair of that committee from 2002 to 2005. He has also served as the Program Chair for the 1997 Annual Meeting in Fredericton. Other services to statistics and the Society include serving as a Regional Representative on the SSC Board of Directors for 4 years, as an Associate Editor of The Canadian Journal of Statistics for 6 years and membership of the NSERC Grant Selection Committee for statistics.
The award citation reads:
“To Brajendra Chandra Sutradhar, for many years of contributions to the Society, and especially for distinguished service to our Annual Meetings.”
Pierre-Robillard Award
SSC Pierre-Robillard Award awarded to Dr. Mylène Bédard
The Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) has announced that the Pierre Robillard Award for the best Ph.D. thesis in the areas of probability and statistics defended in Canada in 2006 is awarded to Dr. Mylène Bédard. The formal announcement of this award was made by SSC President Charmaine Dean at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s on the opening day of the 2007 SSC Annual Meeting.
Dr. Bédard’s thesis is entitled “On the Robustness of Optimal Scaling for Random Walk Metropolis Algorithms” and was completed at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Professor Jeffrey Rosenthal. The thesis used sophisticated probabilistic arguments to establish optimal implementations of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm for Markov chain Monte Carlo. The Metropolis-Hastings algorithm is one of the most widely used methods in modern Bayesian analysis, with applications ranging throughout the sciences. Dr. Bédard’s results have extended previous work on optimal implementations to increasingly realistic settings and thereby further extended the scope of this powerful algorithm.
Dr. Bédard received her B.Sc. from the Université Laval in 2001 before moving to Toronto, where she receivedher M.Sc. in 2002 and Ph.D. in 2006. She is now a research fellow working within the Centre for Research in Statistical Methodology at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. She will soon join the Département de mathématiques et de statistique at the Université de Montréal, where she has been appointed Assistant Professor. There, she will continue her work on the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods in general.
The criteria used in the assessment of theses for this award include the originality of ideas and techniques, the possible applications and their treatment, and the potential impact of the work on the statistical sciences. 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 in statistics.
CRM-SSC Prize in Statistics
CRM-SSC Prize in Statistics awarded to Dr. Richard Cook
Richard Cook, Professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo, is the 2007 winner of the CRM-SSC Prize. Dr. Cook’s work in longitudinal and lifetime data analysis has had immense impact on biostatistics, medicine and public health. Within 15 years of his Ph.D., Richard Cook has made outstanding contributions to an impressive number of statistical research fields covering the design of clinical trials, hierarchical models, robust inference, and the analysis of survival, multi-state, and recurrent event data. His work is solidly grounded in important problems in public health and clinical trials, and he has substantially raised the level of statistical expertise in the Canadian and international medical community through his important methodological advances in these fields. That this community has afforded him several major awards to develop new theory in his areas of expertise is evidence of the great respect it has for him. Richard Cook is gifted with great insight and a passion for closely knit collaborative work, one which truly embodies the sorts of interdisciplinary connections which form the cornerstone of rapid advances in medical and biostatistical research.
Richard Cook obtained his B.Sc. in Statistics from McMaster University, and his M.Math in 1989 and Ph.D. in 1993 from the University of Waterloo. He was appointed a Research Assistant Professor in Statistics in 1993 at the University of Waterloo. He currently holds adjunct appointments in the Department of Health Studies and Gerontology at the University of Waterloo and in the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University. In 1998, he became an Associate Professor and then, in 2003, a Full Professor. He was awarded a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Statistical Methods for Health Research at the University of Waterloo in 2005.
Richard Cook is a leading international expert in longitudinal and life history data analysis. He has made ingenious contributions to the analysis of multi-state models and the joint analysis of multiple events. His joint work with Jerry Lawless has helped set current frameworks used in the analysis of recurrent events, and their jointly authored book "The Statistical Analysis of Recurrent Events" is to be published in July 2007. Characteristic of Richard Cook’s research is the novelty and insight it brings to important problems in public health research. He has made exceptional contributions to the medical community and is one of their leading experts in methods for several application areas including rheumatology, cardiovascular disease, oncology, clinical trials and transfusion medicine. He has also provided great leadership through service on several medical advisory panels and medical research grant selection committees. He was a Scholar of the (previous) Medical Research Council of Canada from 1996 to 2000, and he held an Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research from 2000 to 2005 as well as a Premier's Research Excellence Award from the Ontario Ministry of Energy, Science and Technology and GlaxoSmithKline from 1999 to 2004. Professor Cook has served as Associate Editor of The Canadian Journal of Statistics and Lifetime Data Analysis, and as President of the Biostatistics Section of the SSC. Professor Cook has also made important contributions to training with four postdoctoral fellows, six doctoral, and thirteen Master's degrees completed under his supervision. Richard Cook’s impact on biostatistics has been truly inspiring.
Richard credits his success to his parents who created a nurturing and supportive home life during his formative years, to inspirational colleagues at the University of Waterloo, and to top notch graduate students and research fellows. Richard's sister, Dr. Deborah Cook, is a Canada Research Chair in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University, with whom he collaborates on occasion. Richard, his wife Alison, and their sons Graham and Eric live in Hamilton, Ontario, where they enjoy cycling, hiking, running, golf and soccer.
This announcement of the 2007 CRM-SSC Prize was made at Memorial University in St. John’s, site of this year's Annual Meeting of the Statistical Society of Canada. The CRM-SSC Prize, jointly sponsored by the SSC and the Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM), is given each year to a Canadian statistician in recognition of outstanding contributions to the discipline during the recipient’s first 15 years after earning a doctorate.
Richard Cook is the ninth 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 Sitter (Simon Fraser), Jiahua Chen (Waterloo) and Jeffrey Rosenthal (Toronto).
The Canadian Journal of Statistics Award
The Canadian Journal of Statistics Award awarded to Angelo Canty, Anthony Davison, David Hinkley and Valérie Ventura
The Statistical Society of Canada today announced that Angelo Canty, Anthony Davison, David Hinkley and Valérie Ventura have been awarded The Canadian Journal of Statistics Award for the best paper published in the journal for 2006, judged according to excellence, innovation and presentation.
The paper is titled “Bootstrap diagnostics and remedies”.
Bootstrap techniques are popular, flexible tools that statisticians use to quantify uncertainty in estimation procedures. These methods are applied in many areas, from the analysis of data arising from cancer studies to modeling insurance claims. However, bootstrap techniques require certain mathematical assumptions to be met in order for the computed quantities to be valid and reliable. Because this paper provides fast and simple procedures for checking some of these assumptions, the methods will be quickly incorporated into the toolboxes of many statisticians.
Dr. Canty is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at McMaster University; Dr. Davison is a Professor of Statistics at the École Poytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland; Dr. Hinkley is a Professor of Statistics in the Department of Statistics and Applied Probability at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Dr. Ventura is a Research Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.