2006 PARZEN PRIZE FOR STATISTICAL INNOVATION

 

to be awarded by
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS
to
ALAN E. GELFAND

 

April 10, 2006, 3:45 pm, Rudder Tower, Room 301

 

The 2006 EMANUEL AND CAROL PARZEN PRIZE FOR STATISTICAL INNOVATION will be proudly awarded to ALAN E. GELFAND, Professor of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University, by the Department of Statistics at Texas A&M University. The prize ceremony is on Monday, April 10, 2006 beginning at 3:45 pm, in the Rudder Tower, Room 301.

 

Professor Gelfand will present a popular lecture entitled:

"LOOKING BACK ON 15 YEARS OF MCMC: ITS IMPACT IN THE STATISTICAL (AND BROADER) RESEARCH COMMUNITY"

 

He will present an exciting review that will be focused on the involvement of the Bayesian community with Markov Chains Monte Carlo (MCMC) and Gibbs sampling.

 

The Parzen Prize for Statistical Innovation is awarded (in April of even numbered years) to North American statisticians who have made outstanding and influential contributions to the development of applicable and innovative statistical methods. The prize has been established to reduce the sparsity of prestigious awards and prizes that recognize outstanding careers in the discipline and profession of statistics. The Parzen Prize for Statistical Innovation is supported by the Emanuel and Carol Parzen Fund which was established as an endowment at the Texas A&M Development Foundation in honor of the 65th birthday on April 21, 1994 of Emanuel Parzen, Distinguished Professor of Statistics at Texas A&M University. Members of the Committee awarding the Prize for 2006 were Suojin Wang (Texas A&M), James H. Matis (Texas A&M), Bradley Efron (Stanford), Grace Wahba (University of Wisconsin), and William Schucany (Southern Methodist University).

 

The 2006 Emanuel and Carol Parzen Prize for Statistical Innovation is awarded to Alan Gelfand for his significant research on statistical theory and applications which have transformed Bayesian practice by pioneering statistical inference by MCMC and the Gibb sampler, innovated methods for spatial statistics, hierarchical modeling and model determination, and environment and earth sciences.

 

Alan Gelfand has an international reputation as a world class pioneer in the theory and practice of Bayesian statistics and spatial statistics. He has given an extraordinary number of invited talks and is one of the most cited mathematical scientists in the world. The number and influence of his Ph. D. students (most of whom are having distinguished careers as academics) is unusually high. Alan Gelfand received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1969, and has been a Professor of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University since 2002.

 

Emanuel Parzen is a Distinguished Professor of Statistics at Texas A&M University. In 1994 he was awarded the Samuel S. Wilks Memorial Medal of the American Statistical Association "for outstanding research in Time Series Analysis, especially for his innovative introduction of reproducing kernel spaces, spectral analysis and spectrum smoothing; for pioneering contributions in quantile and density quantile functions and estimation; for unusually successful and influential textbooks in Probability and Stochastic Processes; for excellent and enthusiastic teaching and dissemination of statistical knowledge; and for a commitment to service on Society Councils, Government Advisory Committees, and Editorial Boards." Dr. Parzen was also awarded the 2005 Gottfried E. Noether Award "for a lifetime of outstanding achievements and contributions in the field of nonparametric statistics, both in research and teaching."