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Rao Prize Conference on May 14, 2015 features statistics prize winners

11 May 2015

From left to right: Sir David R. Cox, Nancy Reid, and Vijay V. Raghavan

From left to right: Sir David R. Cox, Nancy Reid, and Vijay V. Raghavan

 

The Penn State Department of Statistics will host the 2015 Rao Prize Conference on Thursday, May 14, 2015 on the Penn State University Park campus in 102 Thomas Building. This one-day conference, which is free and open to the public, begins with registration at 8:00 a.m. and continues until 5:20 p.m. The full schedule of events is online.

The conference honors three prize recipients: the 2015 C. R. and Bhargavi Rao Prize Recipient Sir David R. Cox, Professor Emeritus of Statistics and Honorary Fellow of Nuffield College at University of Oxford; the 2015 P. R. Krishnaiah Lecturer Nancy M. Reid, the University Professor of Statistical Sciences at the University of Toronto; and the 2015 C. G. Khatri Lecturer Vijay V. Raghavan, the Alfred and Helen Lamson Endowed Professor in Computer Science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

The conference program consists of three plenary speakers, four invited speakers, and a poster presentation by graduate students. The plenary speakers are Cox, Reid, and Raghavan. The invited speakers are Professor of Statistics Aurore Delaigle of the University of Melbourne, Professor of Statistics Bing Li of Penn State, Verne M. Willaman Professor of Statistics Runze Li of Penn State, and Senator William McMaster Chair in Econometrics and Professor of Statistics Jeffrey Racine of McMaster University.

Top row from left to right: Aurore Delaigle, Bing Li. Bottom row from left to right: Runze Li, Jeffrey Racine

Top row from left to right: Aurore Delaigle, Bing Li. Bottom row from left to right: Runze Li, Jeffrey Racine

 

One of the highlights of the conference is the award of the 2015 Rao Prize to Sir David R. Cox. Cox is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Honorary Fellow of the British Academy, Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Foreign Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Foreign Member of the Indian National Academy of Science, and Foreign Associate of the Indian Academy of Science. He is a winner of the Guy Medal in Silver in 1961 and the Guy Medal in Gold in 1973 of the Royal Statistical Society, the Kettering Prize and Gold Medal for Cancer Research in 1990, and the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 2010. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1985. He was editor of the journal Biometrika from 1966 to 1991. He has served as president of the Bernoulli Society, of the Royal Statistical Society, and of the International Statistical Institute. He has received honorary doctoral degrees from Harvard University, Oxford University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Toronto, Waterloo University, and many others.

This conference also highlights the 2015 P. R. Krishnaiah Lecturer Nancy M. Reid and the 2015 C. G. Khatri Lecturer Vijay V. Raghavan. Reid is a recipient of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies Presidents' Award in 1992, the Krieger-Nelson Prize in 1995, the Statistical Society of Canada Gold Medal in 2009, and the Statistical Society of Canada Distinguished Service Award in 2013. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a recipient of the Web Intelligence Consortium Outstanding Service Award, the Association for Computing Machinery Distinguished Scientist Award, and the IEEE Intentional Conference on Data Mining Outstanding Service Award.

The C.R. and Bhargavi Rao Prize was established to honor and recognize outstanding and influential innovations in the theory and practice of mathematical statistics, international leadership in directing statistics research, and pioneering contributions by a recognized leader in the field of statistics. The C. G. Khatri Memorial Lectureship and P. R. Krishnaiah Memorial Lectureship honor the memory of C. G. Khatri and P. R. Krishnaiah by inviting outstanding researchers in statistics to deliver lectures at Penn State. More details about the conference are on the web.

Contacts:

Michael Akritas: mga@stat.psu.edu

Lingzhou Xue: lzxue@psu.edu