Each year, awards are given at the annual Joint Statistical Meetings. This year, three HSPH faculty members were honored at the meeting, which took place in Seattle from August 6 to 10.
Marvin Zelen
Marvin Zelen, professor of statistical science in the HSPH Department of Biostatistics and member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, has been named the winner of the 2006 Samuel S. Wilks Award, one of the most prestigious awards bestowed by the American Statistical Association (ASA).
Zelen is a pioneer in biostatistics, conducting fundamental work on the contribution of statistics to clinical trials, particularly in cancer research. His insights into methods of randomization in trials and into the use of exponential regression with censored data are considered seminal.
In 1949, he received a BS from the City College of New York, a master's degree from the University of North Carolina in 1951, and a doctoral degree from the American University in 1957. He held positions at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards, the Mathematics Research Center (University of Wisconsin), before moving to the National Cancer Institute, and then to the faculty at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.
From SUNY, Zelen was recruited by Frederick Mosteller, who recently passed away, to come to Harvard in 1978 with 10 other statisticians, including Stephen Lagakos, now a professor of biostatistics at HSPH. Zelen served as chair of the Department of Biostatistics from 1980 to 1990, during which time he played an important role in investigating an association between leukemia cases in Woburn, MA, and contaminated water wells. An annual award and lecture has been established at HSPH in his name.
Zelen also founded the Division of Biostatistical Science at the Dana_Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) in 1977 and served as its chair until 1998. He continues to conduct research at DFCI, focusing on developing statistical models for the early detection of disease and on methods for the analysis of randomized multicenter clinical trials.
ASA was founded in 1839 and is the country's leading professional association for statistics and for statisticians.
The Wilks Memorial Award was established in 1964 and recognizes outstanding contributions to statistics. Samuel Wilks was a founding member of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, which now has 4,000 members, and was editor of the Annals of Mathematical Statistics for 11 years.
Xihong Lin
HSPH Professor of Biostatistics Xihong Lin received the 2006 Presidents' Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS).
The award is given annually to a statistician under the age of 41 in recognition of outstanding contributions to the profession of statistics. The award, established in 1976, is viewed as the most prestigious award for a young statistician, and is jointly sponsored by five statistical societies: the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society (IBS), the Western North American Region of the IBS, and the Statistical Society of Canada operating through the COPSS.
The award recognizes Lin's fundamental contributions to statistical methodology and theory for longitudinal data and clustered survival data, including nonparametric kernel and spline methods as well as semiparametric regression methods, mixed effects models, and measurement error models.
Louise Ryan
Louise Ryan, chair of the Department of Biostatistics, received the 2006 Elizabeth L. Scott Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS). The award is one of the five prestigious awards jointly sponsored by five statistical societies, the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society (IBS), the Western North American Region of the IBS, and the Statistical Society of Canada operating through the COPSS.
The award recognizes Ryan for "serving as a highly visible role model for women at Harvard and around the world; for developing an exemplary summer program for recruiting minority and female students to graduate study in biostatistics; for excellent mentoring; and for supervising numerous female PhD students and postdoctoral scholars who now are in the position to influence the next generation of women in statistics."
Copyright, 2009, President and Fellows of Harvard College
